


Searching for a balance while desk planning a coup d'état

by Kazaha_87



Series: Roll With The Wind [3]
Category: Kyou Kara Maou!
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, BDSM, Bondage, Brother/Brother Incest, F/M, M/M, Multi, Rope Bondage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-09
Updated: 2016-08-20
Packaged: 2018-06-01 03:24:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 58,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6498901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kazaha_87/pseuds/Kazaha_87
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finally our group reaches Caloria, where they're going to meet with Lady Flynn, Saralegui and Yelshi (and Gisela at some point) and where they're going to perfect the plan of infiltration in Dai Shimaron.</p><p>Meanwhile, a new love is going to be born, while, on the other hand, Saralegui (more or less) involuntarialy generates a really big emotional storm around himself that accidentally brings to a shocking realization about the Daikenja's fate that risks to endanger both Sara's and Ken's psycological balance...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Reconciliation

**Author's Note:**

> This first chapter is meant as a prologue, so from next chapter on the new setting will be Lady Flynn's palace/mansion/whatever in Caloria.  
> I sincerely hope you will continue to follow me and enjoy reading my story.
> 
> Actually, this first chapter is for all Conrad's fans who are reading my story and hated me for how I mistreated him until now...  
> Hope you'll like it (and, please, as always, comments and reviews are greatly appreciated as much as kudos XD)
> 
> As always, forgive me for any grammar mistakes... if you happen to hate them too much, please, become my english betas XD I'll love you forever XD

They were going to finally land in Caloria in three hours – more or less – and, after days of ‘cold war’ with the Maoh, Conrad decided to try and approach him when they were still at sea.

“Heika…”, he knocked at the door of the young man’s stateroom and waited patiently for a reply.

Almost two minutes later Yuuri finally opened the door, but he remained silent, waiting for the taller man to talk first.

“May I come in, please?”, Conrad went on asking with deference. “I would like to talk to you before landing.”, he stated.

Yuuri seemed to ponder his request, but, at the end, he stepped aside and made him space to enter. Then he waved at a chair in the corner of the small cabin and he himself sat on the edge of his bed.

“I’m listening.”, the Maoh dryly said at last when Conrad just sat down, probably searching for a way to start and, given his silence, without succeeding.

“First of all”, he started, mortified in his tone and expression, “I am sorry.”

“As you should be, Conrad.”, Yuuri readily retorted. “I don’t expect any less from you given your conduct for the last _years_ with me, Wolf and, worst of all, _your husband_.”, he harshly berated him and the man just lowered his ashamed gaze to a spot on the floor, unable to keep up his eyes and stare back at his king.

“I know”, he flatly replied with a heavy sigh. “but I also wanted to tell you that I don’t regret kissing you”

“ _How dare you say that after---_ ”, Yuuri started, angrier than ever, but Conrad raised a hand to shush him.

“Please, Heika: let me finish before getting angry at me.”, he said, and, even if reluctantly, the double black slowly calmed down and allowed him to continue.

“I don’t regret my gesture”, he went on, “because it made me finally realize how stupid I had been for all these last almost three _decades_.”, he stated, serious.      
“All this time I had been selfish, self-centered, _greedy_ and always unsatisfied of what I already had, craving for more and more every time I gained something for my own.”, he said.        
“I was born a prince, but still I was a half-blood”, he explained, “and I got used to be negated, since I was a child, many things that pure-blood mazoku could have with no problem at all.       
Since Wolfram’s birth”, Conrad went on, “I loved my beautiful little brother deeply. He was so small, soft and adorable. He was the most beautiful thing I’d ever saw, so I started doting on him and he started showing his love to me from day one.”, he said, and his tone got a little bit nostalgic while his sad smile softened.

“He was what I loved the most in the world, and he had also been my first and maybe biggest disenchantment about life and, more specifically, about life for a _half_ -mazoku like I was.”, he declare, and Yuuri frowned but continued to listen to Conrad’s confession in silence.

“Then”, he went on, “I was negated my father’s last moments by Gwendal, a pure-blood mazoku. My grudge against him for that obviously dissipated with the years and with my growing”, Conrad quickly clarified, “but I can’t ignore it when figuring out what kind of person I am today.”, he explained and sighed again before going on.

“And after that – or, to be more precise, it was together with my father’s demise – there was Yozak’s affair.”, Conrad finally reached the main point he wanted to touch since he had started that whole conversation with Heika.

“I met Yozak”, he started to narrate, as if lost in thought and suddenly oblivious of the fact that he wasn’t just recalling the past all alone in his own mind, “during my first journey by horse together with my father. He was the first one like me I ever met”, he said, “and we became friends right away.”

Then Conrad paused, contemplating the old memories as if living them again once more in front of his eyes.

“For seventeen years, twice a year, my father brought me together with him on his patrols, and we always went to get him first thing first before continuing our watches.”, he recounted.

“Then, all of a sudden, my father decided to bring my brother with him on patrol once, and Gwendal came back with my father’s body and with my only friend on tow, who was eagerly happy to be in the Capital for the first time and didn’t stop talking about how Lord von Voltaire’s appearance was deceiving and of how much he was an interesting and nice person despite his brusque attitude and all… and Gwendal became his boss, the one who gave him a job and who taught him everything he needed to know and, for a reason or another, he was always on Yozak’s mouth even after we got married… I was jealous…”, he confessed, “And that’s when Julia just shows out…”

He suddenly paused, deeply ashamed for his own behavior, and closed his eyes for a moment, trying to collect the courage to dig even deeper inside the aching memories of his own mistakes.

“She was so beautiful, inside and out, and we were so much alike… she was blind, but she always saw through me, and chatting with her felt so good… and I know that it wasn’t right to hit on her when I was already married to another, but at the time I felt as if I had already lost Yozak to my brother… I was jealous… too jealous for our own good…”, then, all of a sudden, Conrad snorted before adding “and she was someone else’s too… of another pure-blood mazoku… and then, a short time after I discovered this, the war started, and then she died and Ulrike summoned me by the temple and told me that Shinou Heika’s will was for me to go to another world with Julia’s soul in order to choose the right family for the new Maoh who’d have succeeded my mother and I wasn’t allowed to tell about my mission to anybody at all…”, he cut short at the end on the details that Yuuri already knew and, after that, he just didn’t add anything more and just watched at his king with plain eyes, waiting, because he actually had finished with what he had come there to tell him.

And Yuuri studied him in silence for a long time, pensive.

He was glad that Conrad had decided to share his story with him. To finally _confide_ in him, acknowledging him not as Suzanna Julia von Wincott, but as Shibuya Yuuri… a friend.

“…I’m still angry at you”, Yuuri stated at last, grave, after a very long meditative pause. “But now I understand you better, and I forgive you.”, he declared. “And it seems to me that maybe you never stopped loving Yozak… am I wrong?”, he asked then, and Conrad lightly sneered at himself and shook his head.

“No, you’re not wrong.”, he confessed and then, in an almost solemn tone, he added “and I took the decision to fight to conquer his heart back.”

After that last statement, Yuuri brightly smiled at Conrad for the first time in days and heaved a relieved sigh.

“I’m glad to hear that.”, the Maoh replied and Conrad, earnestly smiling back at him, raised from the chair and, after a deep bow, he just made to take his leave when, finally opening the door, he found himself in front of Yozak, his brother and the Sage, who, judging from the expression on their faces, evidently – and quite embarrassingly – eavesdropped to his conversation with Heika.

And the first one who got a hold of himself was obviously the sage, who just widely grinned at the married couple and then, bypassing Yozak in order to reach Sir Weller who was actually standing behind him, he patted his fiancé’s brother on the back and cried out loud a “good luck” that made the usually composed brunet turn pink.


	2. First Day at Lady Flynn’s House

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now Sara finally makes his first appearance in my story, and I sincerely hope that you'll like him as much as I do, and as much as I enjoyed writing him.  
> He's so----GRRR!! You just can't refrain from the sudden impulse of strangling him with your hands and the one of jumping him! (Or at least for me it's like that XD)  
> Also... time for Wolfram and Murata to have some "quality time" together... at least from the sage's point of view XD ...and then the "fun" will continue into next chapter ;)
> 
> By the way, I hope you'll enjoy this new chapter as much as I actually enjoyed writing it :D

When they finally reached the Governor’s Mansion on the top of the hill that towered over the capital of the small and now independent State of Caloria, they surely didn’t expect to be welcomed by Saralegui.

“Sara! You already arrived! I’m so happy to see you!”, the never-learning Yuuri greeted the young king of Shou Shimaron running to him and friendly smiling and hugging him. “It’s been so long since the last time you visited Shin Makoku!”

And, as every single time, Saralegui froze for a moment at the sudden touch before adjusting enough in order to be able to tolerate it and even hug him back.

“Yuuri!”, he greeted back with a measured voice and smile. “It’s a pleasure to see you too. So? How’s your new life as a bachelor?”, he alluded not so implicitly while winking at Wolfram, and, if Yuuri turned slightly pink for the abrupt and too direct question, the blond soldier – disguised as a girl for the travel – almost threw himself at Sara’s throat for his totally uncalled for impudence.

Luckily enough, Ken held him back just in time to stop him from giving rise to a political war with their Allied State for murdering their king.

“And Lord von Bielefeld”, Sara went on, not content with just his previous soft instigation at the blond’s expense, “I also heard of your quick recovery from your heartbreak… so maybe your feelings for your now _ex_ -fiancé”, he remarked totally on purpose, “weren’t as strong as you utterly claimed they were…”, he insinuated and, at that allusion, _everybody_ of them promptly tried to protest, but Ken arrived first.

“A young brat who has yet to experience what means to love someone has _no right_ to judge who already has and made his own choices in light of that knowledge and consciousness.”, he retorted and Saralegui flinched while everybody else, Wolfram included, fell silent for a moment at the sage’s words.

“…oh”, the blond half-Shinzoku king replied after a while, swallowing his annoyance for the light insult and the rebuking tone of the Sage, and clearly feigning a kind and defused half-smile. “With my previous statement I meant no disrespect to you, Lord von Bielefeld. I was just pondering about the abruptness of all this and the _readiness_ you showed in finding a substitute in such a short time… and,  moreover, _the_ _only_ _other_ double black in the whole world!”, he wittingly concluded and, at that, Wolfram found the way to free himself from Ken’s grip.

“ _How dare you?!_ ”, he yelled, over the threshold of fury, and was able to fist him in the face before anyone could stop him, this time. “My choice has _nothing_ to do with the color of his hair or eyes!”, he declared, livid and threatening, and, at that, Saralegui was going to retort at him that Yuuri finally stepped in.

“ENOUGH!”, the Maoh roared and the ground suddenly started to quake under their feet, working finally as a deterrent to going on. “And now”, he added at last when nobody attempted to say another word again about it or anything else, “I would appreciate to know where Lady Flynn is, because I’d really like to greet her too, given that she had been so kind as to receive and accommodate all of us here in her house.”

And, at those words, her butler magically appeared where they were and leaded the way inside the mansion to the drawing room.

“Lady Flynn will join you as soon as possible so, please, wait her here. It won’t take long. Meanwhile, we will take care of your luggage for you, so you don’t need to be concerned about them. After that, we will gladly show you to your lodgings for your stay here. And please: wherever possible, no bloodshed on the floor…”, the old man stated and then asked in a flat and kind tone typical of any butler, before disappearing again the moment later as fast as he had appeared only a few minutes earlier by the main entrance.

-&-

The moment Lady Flynn appeared by the door of the drawing room where they were waiting for her, Yuuri, who was, goodness only knew why, chatting with Murata and Wolfram about his mother Jennifer and her curry, abruptly stopped talking and suddenly turned red in the face while his breath started to get slightly uneven.

 _Had she always been so beautiful?_ , he asked himself while she approached them with a big smile drawn on her face that could only make him goofily smile back and that turned his cheeks even redder.

And Lady Flynn, unprepared to such a reaction from the Demon King, slightly flushed too, but, nonetheless, she greeted him first, because, after all, he was a king and the leader of their League.

At that, after kindly greeting her too, Ken threw a glance at Yozak while still smirking under his sleeve at the little show in front of his eyes, alluding, with his knowing expression, to the conversation they had on the ship the first day of travel by sea to Caloria, and Yozak grinned back, finding the scene quite exhilarating to watch too.

Wolfram, on the other hand, tensed despite himself: he had no more right to be jealous over Yuuri, and even less now that he had a new fiancé, but he just couldn’t help it, and after six years he had acted as a watchdog to the Maoh, not-caring was just impossible for him.

And Ken, who was standing next to him, just a few seconds after his mute exchange with the redhead spy, wasn’t the only one who noticed.

“Lord von Bielefeld…”, Saralegui approached the blond demon in disguise on his free side and, slightly bending over him, he murmured into his ear. “Don’t you find it a little _disrespectful_ to your _new partner_ to just stand there watching at your _ex_ - _fiancé_ with such an evident jealousy radiating from all over your body?”, he teasingly asked, and, frowning hard with his hot-temper still barely in check, Wolfram was ready to answer back at his uncalled-for remark, but Ken, once again, was faster: so he deeply bent not only his head but also his torso on the other side of his lover and, from that position, he leered upright from over his spectacles at Saralegui with a very large fake smile plastered all over his face.

“I don’t believe this issue might be of any concern to you, Your Highness.”, he replied with a put-on benevolence in his tone and expression. “After all, won’t _I_ should be the one complaining about that if ever getting bothered by it at some point?”, he added then, calmly as if it was nothing, but both Wolfram and Saralegui were able to sense the sage’s feral and possessive fury mounting inside him under that thick wall of perfect kindness. And Saralegui just mirrored him in that same position on the other side of Wolfram and leveled his gaze with Ken’s.

“That’s exactly why I asked him about his behavior in your presence, Your Eminence the Great Sage”, he shot back, grinning in amusement and feigning a caring interest. “I was merely concerned about you! After you actually went through the trouble of starting courting him, I just thought it was very _unjust_ to you and the good intentions you actually showed him with your gift to him.”, he pointed out, and Wolfram, at Saralegui’s last statement, raised an eyebrow in an irritated as much as shocked tic.

“And how do you know he gave me a gift?”, he suddenly asked, stepping in their bicker, but Sara just pointed at his left hand and swiftly commented a nonchalant “it’s an unusual finger for a ring, don’t you believe, my lord?” that made the mazoku soldier abruptly blush.

Then, that instant, Yozak suddenly showed at their back, a friendly hand on Wolfram and the Sage’s shoulder before throwing an amused glance at the blond half-Shinzoku king.

“Hoy hoy!”, he stepped in, “As much as I actually find this exchange entertaining, I’m sure that you don’t really want to enrage an already emotionally unstable Maoh, do you?”, he pinpointed while throwing an alluding glance toward their king and, luckily enough, that was sufficient to make them stop arguing between each other over nothing. “And also”, Yozak mischievously went on after a brief pause, lowering his tone so that no one else except the three of them could hear him, “isn’t it entertaining enough to just watch at their clumsy attempts of approaching each other?”, he asked them, and Ken sneered at his rhetorical question and threw a short and knowing glance at the redhead in response, quickly forgetting his small squabble with king Saralegui now that he found a show worth watching right in front of his eyes.

“What do you have in mind?”, he eagerly asked his redheaded friend, and the two blonds, at that question, turned towards them, their curiosity abruptly aroused by those mere last six words, and Yozak only winked at all of them and, the instant later, he just put on an innocent face.

“I really don’t know what you’re talking about…”

-&-

“ _Go change into something more appropriate and then come to my quarters_ ” Ken had dryly _ordered_ him before entering his own room when they got finally allowed to go and relax after their journey, and all the gods knew how much he needed some rest after that nightmare that lasted eight days and nights…

Wolfram heaved a resigned sigh while letting himself fall on his back on the bed.

“Something more appropriate, _tze_!”, he repeated annoyed and threw one of the several pillows around him against the wall. “As if you actually allowed me to have a single word on that bloody matter!”, he complained to the empty room except for himself and then rolled around and sank his face into the cushions in order to muffle an exasperated scream.

_Why couldn’t he just wait for after lunch?_

He sighed again.

Oh how he would have liked to just take a hot bath and sleep a couple of hours and then, finally, fill his stomach how it _deserved_ to be stuffed after _eight_ long days passed mainly on the deck, dressed as a damn woman, while vomiting his bile down into the sea.

And now, as if it wasn’t enough, Ken was angry at him really for no reason!

“ _Damn!_ He should have known that my reaction didn’t mean anything at all, now!”, he protested to himself and heaved the umpteenth sigh. Then he finally collected enough strength to stand up again and reached his luggage, and he had to keep out everything inside of it before being able to find a pair of trousers and a man’s shirt.

At last, he took his time for removing the lenses and the brown wig (and a myriad of hairpins together with it), then he changed and finally, sighing once more, he left his quarters to go see his fiancé.

-&-

“You certainly took your sweet time, Wolfram…”, Ken complained the moment he entered his parlor knocking but not waiting for an answer from him – as always.

_Really… why in the world was he so angry at him?_

And, at that, Wolfram snapped.

“I took all the time that keeping off that bloody wig required.”, he retorted, his rage seriously starting mounting too, but the more he screamed and complained, the more his lover’s fury grew icy…

He could tell just by looking at him, but, even if he knew that he would have needed to just shut up and say sorry to him, he just couldn’t stop…

“It’s not as if I chose to wear women’s clothes for starters, and, moreover, it was _you_ the one who decided it for me if what Gwendal told me is right… and actually I don’t see a reason why my brother should have lied to me about that. Unlike _you_ , who always try to hide yourself and your intentions behind a thick wall of pleasantries and lies.”, he finished his tirade in a panting mess while Ken just looked at him in total silence, his face an impenetrable mirror of calm.

“…is that all you wanted to say?”, the sage asked at last in a flat tone after a long pause, and Wolfram froze.

In a way, he felt exactly _the_ _same_ of that other time passed waiting for their promised dance together during last Shin Makoku’s festivities… or of when Ken challenged him into the arena…

He was afraid and insecure, in a way, but he was also excited… curious… _thrilled_.

He could feel the sexual tension rising between them… and he could sense the heat mounting inside of him and devouring him from within.

He eagerly nipped at his bottom lip without even realizing it and, in front of such a view, Ken wasn’t able to refrain from a soft amused snort out of his throat in response.

Then Murata’s expression became unreadable again and, slowly, he approached his lover and actually stopped once he got to no more than a palm from him, his black orbs glued to Wolfram’s darkening ones. But the double black deliberately avoided contact with him, making the tension raise even more like that.

And when Wolfram made to close the distance between them, he just took a step back, never diverting his eyes from his and with the same unchanging unfathomable expression.

“…for once, I must admit that I agree with Saralegui about your previous behavior in front of me.”, he stated at last, and the blond demon lost a heartbeat for a second and unconsciously bit his lip again, starting feeling a bit guilty and ashamed.

“…I meant no disrespect to you, Ken.”, he replied on the defensive. “And you should know that, you know?”

“Nonetheless, you got jealous at the _wrong_ person in front of my very eyes.”, the sage flatly retorted and Wolfram found himself swallowing hard while his pulse and breathing drastically hastened.

“I didn’t mean… I mean… after six years of engagement…”, he started, slightly stuttering, but Ken’s glare at him made his words just die in his throat.

“Shall I punish you, then?”, the sage abruptly asked him _eagerly_ after a pause, an unreadable grin now curving up his lips, and a tingling chill ran down Wolfram’s back at that suggestion and the tone of it.

He didn’t reply to that, but the expression drawn all over his face answered well enough on its own, so the smirk curving up the sage’s lips turned into a mischievous one while he suddenly stepped forward again and finally kissed him hard and sloppily until the blond’s legs definitely caved in, forcing his lover to hold on to his neck to keep from falling on his knees.

And when Ken finally guided him to his bedchamber, Wolfram would have never expected what actually came then: his lover, without a word, just shoved him onto the bed and straddled him with an unfathomable expression drawn on his face. Then, in a sensual motion, he removed his own neckerchief and then started caressing his lover’s chest through his shirt with just his fingertips, focusing on his hardening nipples and making Wolfram literally vibrate under his light touch.

Then the sage continued with his ministrations, moving to his armpits and then up his arms and forearms to his white wrists, stealthily pulling them over his head without him even noticing while he was actually too carried away by the flow of arousing sensations he was feeling running through his veins and shaking his whole body like a leaf in the wind. And actually Wolfram didn’t notice he was being tied up with his lover’s scarf to the bed until the moment he actively attempted to move his hands in order to touch him too.

“WHA—what’s the meaning of this!!”, he protested in a startled yell then, but Ken’s expression remained unperturbed while he just watched back at him in silence.

And he also kept silent while he slightly moved from over him to reach the nightstand on the right side of the bed; and when, curious despite himself, Wolfram turned to watch at what he was looking for there and saw his fiancé’s hand grab a pair of scissors from over it, he instinctively started to struggle in order to try to free his wrists from their constriction. But to no avail, because the knot was really well studied to hold up and, worse, to tighten even more the more you strove into it.

“Stop struggling or else.” Ken flatly threatened, but that only made Wolfram even more upset.

“What the hell do you mean ‘or else’, you perverted sage!”, he complained, darting a glare at him, but his fiancé just impishly sneered back at him and shoved in his face what he kept in his hand.

“I was actually starting to miss this handle a bit…”, he commented, totally ignoring the slight menace in his lover’s voice, and that, together with his not at all subtle gesture, made the blond demon under him fight back and whine even more.

“ _Don’t you dare use those things on me, you degenerate!_ ”, he shouted in protest, but Murata snorted again.

“You actually are in no position to order me around now, Wolfram.”, he pointed out while lightly caressing him on the cheek and then down on the neck and his upper chest with the side of the pair of scissors he had in his hand, making the blond hardly shiver at the contact with the cold metal. “And you need to be taught a lesson that I really don’t want you to forget, so all you can do now is quietly learn it and endure your due punishment… and actually I think you understand that you deserve it, don’t you?”, he asked him, obviously expecting a positive reply from him; and when it didn’t come, he just remarked a “ _don’t you_?” in such a tone that Wolfram, before even noticing he was responding to him, promptly replied a “yes” that made him flush hard the moment he actually realized that word left his own lips. But, in that position, he couldn’t hide his flustered state neither with his hands, nor even turning around in order to cover his face.

Then the sage grabbed the edge of Wolfram’s shirt and slightly lifted it up, slowly but peremptorily bringing the pointy scissors closer and closer.

“NO, DON’T!”, Wolfram suddenly cried in protest. “I’ve only two! _Please_!”, he pleaded for him to grace at least his clothes when he understood that he wasn’t joking, but Ken just broadly smiled at him and then, with a tone totally discordant to his expression, he roared a “ _Shut up, I said_ ” that sent deep shivers all down the blond’s spine despite himself and his better judgment, while finally unceremoniously cutting through the cotton fabric of his fiancé’s shirt despite his begging.

And, also despite himself, Wolfram’s arousal stiffened into his constricting pants and against Ken’s groin while his lover cut through the soft material and opened his shirt like if it was a jacket, baring his white and firm chest to his luscious black eyes.

And Ken, after that, literally _ogled_ him, enjoying the view _immensely_.

Then, all of a sudden, he put down the scissors and just checked the hour.

“What?”, Wolfram asked him then, confused, but the sage only smiled at him in his usual and unnerving mysterious way.

“Nothing”, he replied, and then he withdrew a little and started to work on his lover’s pants, opening them. Then he moved one knee after the other back between Wolfram’s legs and finally totally removed his lover’s slacks and underpants and threw them away in a corner of his own room.

“ _Subarashii_ …”, he contemplated in total awe, talking to himself, in Japanese, making Wolfram blush in a very deep shade of red: he actually didn’t know many words in that language, but _that_ one he knew…

Then Ken moved again and, when Wolfram thought he would have finally at least kissed him, he just stood up instead and, without a single word of explanation, he went into the next room where his luggage still rested untouched.

“HEY, YOU!! Where do you think you’re going while leaving me just like that!? HOY!!”, he loudly complained, but he received no answer.

“HEY!! KEN!! JUST COME BACK!! HEY!! Are you listening to me?!”, he persisted for all the couple of minutes the sage _didn’t_ really go away but just rummaged into his own belongings in search for something… but Murata was also actually out of his line of vision, so the blond just couldn’t know.

And, in retrospect, Wolfram would have surely preferred to just stay into oblivion, because when Ken came back, he had a very long rope and another silk scarf with him…

But despite that, an excited thrill ran through his spine at that sight, together with the adrenaline that the view of the rope instilled in him.

“What are you planning using them for?!”, Wolfram asked, starting slightly panicking.

“You’ll see, Wolfram”, the sage only replied, and then he checked the hour again and just _sighed_.

“And why in the world are you continuously checking that bloody thing?!”, Wolfram went on, growing more and more uncomfortable every moment: because he just still didn’t know why, but he knew in his gut that it wasn’t a good sign…

But Ken only smiled at him in that unbearable way of his and just moved next to him and finally straddled him once more; but, this time, giving him his back.

“Why can’t you just answer me properly, Ken! What do you have in mind with that?!”

But the sage just ignored him and, grabbing his lover’s right leg, he bended the rope in two and then just twisted it around that bare, white and tapered but muscular thigh _three_ times.

Then he passed the end of the rope inside and out of it in order to fix the tightness and made a knot.

“Hey, you! What does that mean!! HEY! Are you even listening to me?! Explain what you are planning to do to me!!”

“…as I already said”, Ken finally turned at him and started to explain with a very patient and kind tone, so very different from the one he had used before, and that tone made Wolfram shiver in fear for a moment actually _more_ than his authoritative one, “you are going to know soon enough, my love.”

Then, with no warning, Ken grabbed his ankle and abruptly and forcefully made him bend his leg so that his calf practically adhered with the thigh, and he tied it too, the same way he had tied his upper leg. With the same ‘ritual’.

And reached that point, Wolfram was so shocked and incredulous to what was happening that he actually _stopped_ complaining and just watched at his lover’s back with blank eyes while he continued working on his legs, passing to both his ankles – that he fastened up together – and then up again in reverse to his left calf and thigh.

When, after that, Ken finally moved and reached the pair of scissors on the night table again, Wolfram had reached such a state of trance that he didn’t even notice, but he came back to his senses the moment his lover cut a long strip from his already cut shirt.

“ _What_ \---!”, he protested without much conviction now and more out of surprise the moment the sage grabbed his now softened manhood and worked on it until it was back at his full magnificence, with his hand _and_ with his mouth and tongue.

But right when he was going to cum, Ken stopped and promptly and smartly put the cotton bend in use around that stiffened and already dripping part of him that just screamed for release.

“NO!”, Wolfram cried out loud before being able to control his own emotions and reactions, and Ken just smirked at him in a totally mischievous way and, retrieving his silk scarf, he just used it as a gag on him, who, at that, finally started to protest and struggle back again, but again to no avail.

“You know, Wolfram”, Ken finally started once he raised up from the bed, watching with self-satisfaction at his piece of art despite his next words. “I actually had something a little more elaborate in mind for you, but there’s no more time before lunch, so I have to make do with just this much for now… but you certainly are astoundingly beautiful even just like that, my love!”, he then added in a wide impish smirk after a short pause through Wolfram’s muffled complaints and fuss. And then, without another word, he just went out, closing the door of his bedchamber and then the one of the parlor behind his back, and he just left him there like that while he went downstairs for lunch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just know I'm a pervert I'm a pervert I'm a pervert!! Geez, I'm still red!! Why is it that writing these kind of scenes is totally different from just reading them written by someone else?! Not even reading doujinshi or hardcore yaoi makes me blush like that!! I really don't understand! Is it just me or anyone else out there is like me? And I'm writing in a different language from mine, because when I write in italian it's even more embarrassing!! WHY?!? Someone, please, just explain me why it happens! I'm not the only one, am I?
> 
> Well...... by the way... see you in next chapter ;)  
> Hope you liked this last one. If so, please, leave me a review. Pleasepleaseplease *she-tries-with-puppy-eyes*


	3. Temptations

“Hey, Murata!”, the Maoh greeted his friend the moment he saw him enter in the dining room alone. “Where’s Wolf? I thought he was with you since I knocked at his door before coming down but I received no answer…”

The Sage’s expression became unintelligible for a moment while he brought his middle finger to the bridge of his nose and slightly adjusted his spectacles up there.

“He wasn’t feeling too well”, he replied in a flat tone, making his own voice sound vaguely concerned, “so I told him to stay and rest in my room. By the way: no need to worry, Shibuya.”, he quickly added when he saw his friend’s expression change into one of true and great concern all of a sudden. “It’s just the after-effect of the travel by sea. I already arranged for his lunch to be delivered to my quarters with the servants, so he’ll be ok.”

“I’m very sorry for him! I hope he’ll recover soon.”, Lady Flynn obliviously commented while entering the dining room after the two double blacks, and being followed right away by Conrad and Yozak. Then she took place at the head of the long table next to Yuuri, and that fact alone was enough to distract the Maoh from what he was going to say, that was that Wolfram usually got better no more than _five_ _minutes_ after going ashore – a very well known piece of information among his friends and family…

And Conrad was going to point that out, but Yozak grabbed him by the arm and raised a red eyebrow in admonition.

After that, they went on chatting together for the next ten minutes or so, waiting for Saralegui to make his entrance, as always after everybody else – no matter who was waiting for him – and when the blond half-Shinzoku king finally graced them with his presence, they saw him hesitate for just a second before actually sitting down at the other head of the table – his usual place.

“Your Eminence the Great Sage”, he addressed the glasses young man sat on the left side of their host. “Won’t you come and sit next to me, instead? I would really appreciate to share your company and a good conversation while having lunch today.”, he suggested, and everybody fell silent for a moment, stunned by the totally unprecedented request coming from him, who usually didn’t care at all about the rest of the world.

Actually, Saralegui had come out with something quite similar a couple of times with Yuuri, and it had appeared to be to gain his friendship and consideration – and sometimes to just piss Wolfram off – but Murata Ken was all another story by all meanings… and the second hypothesis, this time, couldn’t apply at all…

On a whim, suddenly curious of the blond king’s possibly hidden motives behind that unusual request coming from the most arrogant drama queen he had ever known, maybe only after Shinou, Ken raised on his feet and humored him changing his seat, a studying and interested smile drawn on his unreadable face.

“Gladly, Your Highness.”, he complied and Sara smirked at him with almost predatory eyes behind his violet spectacles, under the dubious and tensed expression of everybody else in the room, and it was due, on the one hand, to the sudden request coming from the Shou Shimaron’s king, and, on the other hand, to the Sage’s too prompt reply.

“…by the way, Sage”, Sara went on with nonchalance after the first course had been served, “why don’t I see Lord von Bielefeld here?”, he asked feigning insouciance, and Ken was just waiting for that question coming from him since the moment he had taken seat next to him, and was actually a little surprised that it came after almost ten minutes of chatting together about trivialities.

“He wasn’t feeling too well after the long trip by ship, so now he’s resting.”, Murata lied again without any inflection or uncertainty showing in his voice, but Saralegui only stared at him in silence for a long instant, scrutinizing him.

“Sure!”, he commented at last, clearly skeptical, and grinned at him, knowing. “I am sure that it is just that, Your Eminence, because you certainly _didn’t_ seem angry to me before retiring to your own quarters…”, he insinuated, and, at that remark, Yuuri stepped in.

“What does he mean with that, Murata?”, the Maoh inquired, suddenly on alert, but Ken just turned at him with a radiant big smile.

“I haven’t _the slightest_ idea, Shibuya.”, he defended himself and then, turning back to Saralegui, his smile became a mischievous grin. “And I really don’t see a reason why I should be angry at him at all since he’s being quite _docile_ with me lately…”, he hinted and Yuuri blushed despite himself at the subtle suggestion, and again Conrad tried to wade in their conversation – and again he was stopped by his husband, who, this time, just stepped on his heel under the table in order to make him shut his mouth and not interfere.

“I am sure everything is under control”, Lady Flynn intervened at last, a gentle hand over the Maoh’s one, hoping to be able to distract him from that conversation, because she could sense by now – like everybody else in the room – that the real reason behind Lord von Bielefeld’s absence couldn’t be the one the Sage told them previously, and she was starting to fathom what was actually going on… in fact, rumors travel around real fast and real faraway, and she had heard a few voices about the Sage and his _kinks_ …

And that, together with Yuuri’s awareness of _not_ wanting to further probe that issue _after eight days and nights_ passed as far as he could from his own cabin in order not to have to listen despite himself to what was happening next-door, made him finally drop the subject for good, preferring a nice chat with the beautiful lady sat next to him to a bunch of information he really didn’t want to know…

-&-

When someone knocked at the main door to Ken’s quarters, Wolfram broke out in a cold sweat and bit his gag hard while modestly bending his legs together on a side in order to cover as much as he could of his exposed body in case the person out there would have decided to enter.

He pricked up his ears and when he heard the door to the parlor open he felt like dying, fearing that, as they entered the first door, they could just open that second one and discover him there, in that totally shameful attire…

His breath grew heavier each passing second and he cursed Ken and that damn scarf in his mouth because he just couldn’t breathe.

Then, when after what seemed an entire eternity he heard the main door close again and he discovered that he was safe – at least for instance – he closed his eyes and tried to relax after the big fright, suddenly feeling _exhausted_ ; and it was nothing like when he struggled in order to attempt to free himself: now he was ten times… _a_ _hundred times_ more tired than before!

But, despite that, he could feel his nipples harden and his manhood painfully and helplessly throb in his constriction, pleading for release.

He started to twist and turn on the bed as much as his constraints allowed him to, to move his legs in order to stimulate his arousal, but that damn cloth around it just made it more painful instead of better.

Desperate, he turned around and lay on his side, his face hidden in the cushions while totally upset tears and frantic yells disappeared into the soft fabric.

He had _never_ been this embarrassed in all his entire life!

And Wolfram happened to be too carried away by his own distress to hear the first door open again so, when the one to the bedroom suddenly burst open he heard his heart stop and his spirit leave him for what seemed an eternity to him.

He jerked in total mortification to the intruder, in hope that it was Ken but, at the same time, not wanting it to be him because his pride couldn’t stand the idea of his lover seeing him in that shameful state, with his eyes red and his cheeks still wet of tears.

“I brought you food, my love”, the Sage uttered with a bright smile on his face, as if nothing had happened and they were there just talking about weather, while he posed the tray on the mattress next to the blond. “Are you happy?”, he teased him, and Wolfram, at that, still found the strength to glare at him behind his own tears.

“Oh, Wolfram. Don’t give me that look. I know that you are angrier at yourself more than you actually are at me.”, Murata told him, his tone sympathetic, and his fiancé just groaned at him in dissent, but his voice got muffled by the silk cloth in his mouth, making it an unintelligible sound.

“Don’t deny the evidence, my lion.”, Ken went on, his lips slightly curved up in an impish smirk. “You are actually more aroused now than when I left you here almost an hour ago.”

And, at that, Wolfram only shamefully flushed a very dark shade of red, because, disgracefully, it was true.

“And now, my beautiful flower, I’ll remove your gag and you will tell me what you want. And then, if I’ll be satisfied enough by the way you will ask me, I’ll decide whether or not to get along with your wishes.”, he explained, but right before reaching the knot on his nape, he stopped. “You scream”, he added calmly, “or you complain about your punishment, and I’ll put it back again and leave you here alone like that once more. And you don’t want Shibuya or your brother to find you here like that. Not to mention a servant… do you?”, he rhetorically and devilishly asked him and, when Wolfram paled and shook his head, totally mortified and diverting his eyes from the black orbs in front of him in shame and wounded pride, Ken just brightly smiled at him and finally freed at least his mouth.

“Now, my flammable lion, tell me: what do you want?”, he queried in a soothing tone.

Wolfram didn’t reply for a while, visibly fighting with his own pride into his head, but, at last, his urges won.

“Make me come”, he just said, but Ken slowly shook his head, a smug smile drawn on his face while slightly brushing his forefinger on the tip of his lover’s agonizingly throbbing manhood.

“ _Please!_ ”, the blond mazoku _begged_ at last, and, muttering a “better”, the Sage descended over him, very, _very_ slowly. Then he teased him with his tongue, his lips and even his teeth and, only in the end, he finally took him in his skillful mouth up to his throat and he brought him to his well deserved ecstasy.

“…next time I won’t forgive you!”, Wolfram panted at last when he found himself able to use his voice again without squeaking, but Ken only smugly grinned at him and lightly snorted.

“Next time, eh?…”

-&-

At lunch they had agreed to fix a first short briefing of half an hour or so right after dinner, in order to make the point and to listen to Saralegui’s and Lady Flynn’s reports about the present situation at Caloria and Shou Shimaron borders, given that everything seemed to escalate really fast in Dai Shimaron.

By the way, nothing really new came out from the reports or, at least, nothing they didn’t expect already, so, after their briefing, Ken just asked Lady Flynn to consult her library, hoping to find some useful books and, moreover, a good and adjourned map of the actual borders, because, before leaving Shin Makoku, he had copied one coming from Lord von Voltaire’s personal maps collection, but he wasn’t actually one hundred percent sure that it was adjourned to the last changing after the instauration of the League, because every map in Gwendal’s collection was drawn by the man, and recently he hadn’t had very much time to work on his second hobby…

He quickly found what he was looking for, together with a dozen books he found interesting while giving a glimpse around; so he brought everything together with him to his own quarters and finally retired too, but ready to start studying from the map before going to sleep.

He stopped in the parlor annexed to his bed-chamber and put down the map at the center of the mahogany desk next to the window, piling the books all around it and enlightening the accurate drawing with four candles at each corner of the large paper, keeping it open with the silver candle holders. Then he finally sat on an armchair sadly not as comfortable as it gave out to be at first glance and there he remained for almost an hour since, at half past nine, someone knocked at his door, startling him.

He checked the hour before allowing the person out there to come in, with no idea who it might have actually been.

 _Certainly not Wolfram_ , he thought while peeking through the stack of books in front of him and watching at the handle move with utter curiosity. _He would have_ never _went to the trouble of knocking in the first place (or, at least, of waiting for a reply) and, after this afternoon, I don’t think he’ll come looking for me for a while…_ , he pondered.

The guest slowly opened the door, revealing himself, and, when Ken saw _who_ was standing there, he reflexively stood up on alert and glared at the newcomer, raising an eyebrow dangerously and, the instant later, deliberately ceiling his gaze behind a sought reflecting glow of the candlelight on his spectacles.

“And to what do I owe the _dubious_ privilege of having you pay a visit to me at this late hour and in my own private chambers?”, Ken caustically asked with his best polite smile fixed on his face, but a really sharp glare.

Saralegui smiled a similar smile to him in response while checking out the room. Then he grinned at him and closed the door with his boot whilst waving in the Sage’s face two bottles without a tag.

“My, my! So much hostility! And I came here hoping to make amends for my behavior of this morning!”, the king of Shou Shimaron faked a pout while approaching him with what was clearly a luring intention.

“I am deeply sorry to spoil your fun”, the Sage replied while sitting back again, “but, as you can see by yourself with those pretty eyes of yours, I’m quite busy at the moment. Mayhap we can find the time to share a drink another time… hopefully in another _life_.”, he wittingly suggested, always widely smiling.

“So cruel, Great Sage!”, Sara complained, but the smirk drawn on his face didn’t fade away at the sharp remark either, “…or is it that you can’t handle your liquor and you are reluctant to show me a weakness of yours?”, he implied, teasing, and the double black’s eyebrow tilted up in irritation, his grin suddenly frozen.

“Who said that I can’t hold my liquor?”, the Sage bickered back and fell for the bait more easily than Sara had actually expected him to. “Feel like making a bet out of it?”

“ _I’m all ears, oh Mighty Sage!_ ”, King Saralegui eagerly replied while suddenly putting down the couple of bottles he brought with him over two of the piles of books standing between him and Ken and then sensually bending above the table and placing his elbows over another pile of tomes and finally resting his chin on his open hands, luring over the now once again blond sage with a challenging gaze. “What would you like to suggest?”

Ken stopped for a moment, suddenly aware of his mistake, but he knew that, now, it was too late to withdraw.

He cursed in his head and a light sigh freed itself out of his own lips before he was able to control it – _he was tired, damn it!_ – but, at the end, he decided to play along with him. So he leered at the blond half-Shinzoku and didn’t veiled his ambiguous intentions whilst savoring his gentle – but no more so feminine as the first time he had rested his eyes over him – image now that he was several inches higher than he was before, and a perfectly formed man.

“Well: what about that, if I win, you’ll be _my_ _slave_ for a day? Still willing to pursue your little bet?”, he challenged Sara in a mischievous grin, and the suggestion took the blond king off guard, but he nonetheless was able to overcome the surprise sooner than Ken expected him to; by the way, the dumb face that Saralegui showed him in a first moment of astonishment didn’t keep the sage from widening his already broad grin.

“Fine by me”, the blond king finally agreed, “but then, if I win”, he soon added quite feral, “tomorrow night Lord von Bielefeld will join me in my quarters, and you should ascertain that he will be compliant and that he won’t run away in the middle of it. I would never allow him to spoil my fun and cut off my own good time when the moment comes!”, he tenaciously and steadfastly replied, and then it was Ken’s turn to flinch.

However, he quickly recovered too.

_If it was war Saralegui wanted, war he would have gotten!_

“What makes you so sure that I’ll accept such an _unreasonable_ condition? If the bet is between us, it might just stay like that, don’t you believe?”, Ken retorted, but he should have known that Saralegui was a tough nut to crack, especially when he set his mind on something…

“Then what about calling Lord von Bielefeld here with us and making our little game even more exciting?”, he suggested and Ken frowned, but still he evaluated the possibilities. “You know, Sage”, Sara went on at his pondering silence, so dense that the blond king could actually _hear_ the other man’s gears into his mind moving. “After our callous start this morning I’m sure that he will be _glad_ to take a little revenge on me in case the fates might actually smile on him…”

“Still, I don’t like your terms.”, Ken replied then, after another brief moment of pondering, quite earnest at last, but still on the defensive. “You know, Your Highness: I’m the possessive type, and I don’t like to share what’s mine light-heartedly.”

“Then, what if I try to meet you halfway and I offer you the so-very-benevolent-of-me opportunity to watch?”, he finally tempted him with that last offer, and Sara knew the man in front of him enough to know that, to something like that, he could have actually agreed in the end…

But Ken had not much time to ponder about it, because Wolfram chose that exact moment to enter the room, obviously without knocking and clearly livid.

“To watch _what_ , exactly, _Your Highness_?”, he marked on purpose on the sobriquet, spouting it as if it was an insult more than a title – and, what’s more, the _highest_ title of all…

“Oh! Lord von Bielefeld! Your timing is _perfect_!”, Saralegui uttered in a satisfied as much as conspiratorial smirk. “We were just discussing about calling for you too to join our chatting here and, why not?, maybe also a little game…”, Sara replied before Ken could have the time to open his mouth, and Wolfram raised a skeptical eyebrow while looking at his fiancé’s face, studying him as asking ‘is it true?’.

“You know, Wolfram: he actually came here to importune me while I was working and with a very _discourteous_ offer for a drinking bet.”, Ken decided to reply to his lover’s silent query and Wolfram frowned in response even more.

“Well, Great Sage: let us call a spade a spade. I came here with these two bottles of liquor”, Sara pointed out waving at the bottles in question, “asking for a truce after this morning’s little misunderstanding we had, and _you_ ”, and now he directly addressed the Daikenja, openly contesting his last witty remark, “were the one who proposed a drinking bet.”, he stated. Then, a mischievous grin splitting his face in two, he added, always talking to Murata: “Also, don’t be too harsh while judging the proposal for my term of our bet: your term if I might lose was just as rude as mine, and you suggested it _first_. Actually”, he keenly went on, “I decided for something so _extreme_ just in response to _your_ suggestion. Otherwise I would have certainly been kinder… I’m not as bad as everybody always tends to depict me…”

“If we have to call a spade a spade, then, please, Your Highness: tell _all_ the truth.”, Ken retorted with a bright false smile enlightening his face, momentarily almost forgetting that Wolfram was there with them. “You actually provoked me on purpose, did you not?”, he promptly asked him, bickering back. “Don’t try to lay the blame on me when everything actually started from _you_. Because, even if you pulled my strings to make _me_ suggest a drinking bet, you actually were aiming at that same purpose the moment you crossed that door.”, he specified, pointing at said door, and Saralegui widely smiled back at him.

“You know, Sage: you have no proof of what might have happened if you hadn’t been the one who had actually suggested it. We can’t go back to the past and see… all you can actually do is _speculating_ , and, as you should know, pure speculation is far from being proof enough of anything. Also”, he slightly changed topic, going back to the main point that generated all that bicker, “about the – quoting you – _discourteous_ nature of my suggestion if you actually would have lost the bet, let’s be fair: you had asked me to put at stake _my_ _dignity_ for a day, which is the most important thing in the world to me, even before power itself.”, he plainly explained as a matter of fact, using all the pragmatism of his logic to enlighten the main items about that specific topic. “Now”, he continued with the usual unnerving grin drawn on his face, “wasn’t it _only_ _fair_ that I asked you to put at stake something just as much important to you as that is to me _for a night_?”, Saralegui retorted at last, and, at the meaning hidden behind the last three words of the blond king’s long dissertation, Wolfram finally started to gather what they were actually talking about when he had entered his fiancé’s parlor before.

At that sudden realization, then, Wolfram suddenly glared at Ken, feeling, the more he thought about it, just more and more insulted by the second.

“……and were you actually _pondering_ over it!”, he harshly berated him after a long pause in a disconcerted tone and, even if it was posed as a question, it actually didn’t sound like it at all.

At Wolfram’s remark, then, guilt crossed the Sage’s eyes for just a fleeting instant, but it was enough for Wolfram to recognize it for what it was and, at that, the blond mazoku finally lost his temper for good.

“ _Seriously_!!”, he snapped in a cutting hiss, literally flaming. Then, in just a few stomps, he crossed the room and reached Ken only to slap him backhanded on the cheek with all his might and strength. “My brother told me you were a _depraved_ man and you just showed how much his words were true today, but _that_ overcomes all of my worst forecast on the matter!!”, he declared. “How can you even _think_ to treat me as _a_ _thing_ and just hand me over to the first one who asks you to have me and offers you the chance _to watch in the meanwhile_ and, most of all, to anyone like _him_!?”, he yelled without restraints. “You _disgust_ me!”, he stated out loud, and a vein of hurt resonated at the back of his voice. “Go and just _die_ , Ken!”, he piled it on. “You’re _scum_ like everybody else! And I thought that you were different! Oh, how wrong I was! In the end, you’re all talk! You just sweet-talked me into your bed with promises of love and all, and then, once you won the ‘ _big prize_ ’,”, he bitterly named that his rose, “there’s nothing left and you’re ready to discard me as an object to the first comer.”, he stated, totally _devastated_ , but not a single tear left his eyes, not even an angry one.

Then he attempted to leave, but Ken followed him and grabbed him by his wrist before his hand could reach the handle of his door.

“Wait, Wolfram!”, the Sage commanded, but the blond easily freed himself from his grip, ignoring his protests. Then he just attempted to reach the handle, but suddenly he found himself on his knees instead, crying in pain, before he knew what had happened, all that under Saralegui’s confused eyes who, for who knows what kind of a sudden impulse, peculiarly raised on his feet in a prompt movement and ran towards him in order to help him stand up again.

And he had already reached him and grabbed him by the shoulder, helping him to stay put on his feet, that Ken’s reprimanding and authoritative tone, together with his gesture, made Sara freeze.

“ _Just stop your ramblings, Wolfram!_ ”, the sage snarled at his fiancé, exasperated, and then he slapped him hard for the second time, now in front of Saralegui, making him turn his face for the strength of the blow. “ _You’re spouting nonsense!_ ”, he rebuked him, harsh. “And tell me: have you even tried to listen to your own words?”, he persisted, totally embittered now.

Wolfram, standing in front of his lover, his blank gaze lowered in embarrassment and his left hand on his swollen cheek, for a moment just stopped breathing and, oddly enough, Saralegui, who knew the meaning of a slap for mazokus and, actually, didn’t know it wasn’t the first time that Ken had done it to Wolfram, unconsciously made the same while diving his own fingers in the flesh of the blond’s shoulder where his hand was still resting in support of the unsteady man next to him, without even noticing.

“There was no need for slapping me again”, the blond soldier pointed out after a very long pause in a suddenly very reasonable tone although still very much annoyed, after having freed himself from Saralegui’s grip once he was finally able to stand again on his own feet without outside help. “As much as there was no need for you to knock me down like that in order to stop me from going away.”, he went on and snorted while crossing his arms over his chest and pivoting on his right heel, darting an offended glare at his fiancé. But still he had stopped calling into question Ken’s motives, and Saralegui found himself watching at the two of them in total fascination despite himself: they were both so fierce and proud, no one of them ready to take a step back from their position. No one of them willing to admit defeat…

“Lord von Bielefeld”, Sara started before even noticing that he was talking, and the other two, who momentarily forgot that he was there with them too, swiftly focused their attention on the blond king back again, suddenly curious about his unexpected – at least coming from someone like him – intrusion.

And under their inquisitive gazes Saralegui fell silent for a moment, oddly not knowing how to state what had crossed his mind, an eyebrow tilting up once or twice before finally continuing.

“Actually”, he said, collecting his thoughts while going on, “from your words from before, I believe you misunderstood more than an issue, here.”, he stated, and at _that_ wording, suddenly both Wolfram and Ken frowned deeply, Ken because that was one of his favorite sentences of all and he found it at least peculiar to hear it coming from someone else, phrased _exactly_ like he would have done it, _word for word_ , and Wolfram because those words always reminded him of the sage, and, more specifically, of that night in the woods of a month and a half before then when the man had found and saved him.

And Saralegui noticed the bafflement on their faces, but he just brushed it aside, too busy finding how to express his thought without sounding stupid.

“You know”, he went on, still beating around the bush, peculiarly too embarrassed to say it loud and clear. “My offer to you was actually slightly different from what you assumed it was.”, he clarified. “In fact”, he continued, “I was going to offer _myself_ to you, and not vice versa.”, he stated at last, and both Wolfram _and_ Ken couldn’t refrain themselves from wincing hard in astonishment at that unexpected declaration of a willing submissiveness coming from him.

And Wolfram, for his part, was so stunned by that that he temporarily forgot everything about his wrangle with Ken of just a moment before…

Then Sara, gratified by their renewed attention on him, quickly plucked up the rest of his courage and put up his usual arrogant attitude, his voice growing more luscious and sultry each passing second.

“Now tell me, my lord”, he teased, a knowing alluring grin drawn on his face, “won’t you like to have me _at your mercy_ for a night?”, he vividly suggested now that he was certain that Wolfram’s answer would have been ‘yes’. “I promise that I’ll allow _anything_ that might fancy your tastes in bed…”, Sara alluded promising and tempting and, then, he boldly moved closer to Wolfram and slowly but peremptorily bent over him until their lips collided together, and he stole him a kiss that made the demon’s knees almost yield under the aroused gaze of the sage, who was getting all hot and bothered too at that sizzling view.

And Wolfram, after that, was ready to accept his offer and finally jump him, that Saralegui abruptly stepped back from him, a teasing smile drawn on his face.

“So eager, my lord…”, he taunted him, lightly laughing while enjoying the disappointment as much as the embarrassment on Wolfram’s deeply flushed cheeks and in his darkening eyes. “But I want you to decide and act with a cool head, so, in the meantime, I wish you a good night and sweet dreams, Lord von Bielefeld.”, he winked at the blond and then, waving Ken’s way, he added a “Your Eminence” and just left without waiting for a reply.

After that, Wolfram remained still, blank eyes fixed on the door that that deceiving king closed behind his back when he left.

Ken, on his behalf, just sighed deeply and slowly approached his fiancé; but, when he posed a hand on his shoulder, the blond demon jumped and started to pant, and the sage recognized pure panic into his eyes the brief moment their gazes met.

Then, without a single word or explanation, Wolfram shrugged his hand off him with a loud snap and hastily left too, leaving Murata standing there in utter confusion and with a very bad feeling coming from it…


	4. Breaking Up

The following morning, at breakfast, everybody was already there – Saralegui included – when Wolfram finally arrived. He sat down next to Ken, at his now usual place, but he hardly even greeted him and he never watched him in the eye, not even when, at the end of the meal when everybody was going back to their quarters to prepare before the meeting they had fixed in half an hour, he had asked his fiancé to follow him to his quarters – a pretty rare occurrence because, in normal circumstances, they had unconsciously started to align with the social class unwritten rules and conventions that asked that the higher in rank shouldn’t be the one to visit a lower-class private rooms… and it was the main reason why Wolfram had never invited Yuuri to visit him to his rooms and had always been the one who had so often ‘intruded’ in Yuuri’s instead.

“What is it, Wolfram?”, the sage asked once behind the closed door of the demon’s parlor, starting growing slightly uneasy in front of his lover’s back and silence. “You hardly even spoke to me at breakfast, and you never crossed my eyes since yesterday night. Wolfram, I’m sorry if I disappointed you, but it wasn’t my intention. You know it, don’t you? So I don’t want you to give me the cold shoulder. You know that I love you, and that you are the most important---”

Suddenly, Wolfram stopped him midsentence, his voice slightly broken, but still incredibly firm considered the words he spoke.

“I’m sorry. I can’t accept this” was all he said while removing the ring from his finger and holding it out to him, his sad eyes never crossing the now rolling-blind ones of the man standing in front of him, gaping.

A heavy silence fell upon them and lasted for like an eternity.

Ken stared with blank eyes at his lover’s hand extended at him and at the token laying in the middle of his palm.

“Why?”, the sage was finally able to query at him, a feeble voice so not like him, almost trembling while speaking.

At that, Wolfram finally raised his gaze and fixed it on the stunned man standing there in a daze, still incredulous of what was going on.

“I’m sorry”, the blond soldier repeated only, but that wasn’t an explanation at all, and both of them knew it far too well.

“Tell me why.”, Ken insisted, refusing to move his hand and take the ring back, but Wolfram, in front of his reluctance, took a step forward and gently grabbed one of the sage’s wrists and, forcing his hand open, he put the small heirloom into his palm by force.

“I’m sorry”, the blond repeated for the third time, but then he added something that left Murata more than a little mystified: “you deserve better.”

“How can I find someone better than you?”, Ken readily retorted, and the young mazoku standing in front of him flushed despite himself at the sage’s embarrassing words pronounced as if it was nothing. “Wolfram”, then Murata continued, frightened for the first time in ages, “we are meant to each other, and I won’t let you go, even for a good reason. So I won’t accept it back, and I won’t accept your refusal.”, he stated, serious, and in front of this Wolfram hesitated for a long instant, but, at the end, he just collected himself.

“Please”, Wolfram only replied, but to no avail.

“I beg you: reconsider, Wolfram. _Please_.”, Murata persisted, now desperately hanging at his love’s hands, his black orbs unashamedly pleading while attempting to put the ring back into the other’s hand, and, in front of this much concern coming from him, Wolfram hardly held back his tears, but also closed his hands in a fist more firmly.

“Please, Your Eminence: leave my quarters.”, Wolfram replied, his voice incredibly steady despite the state of his mind, and, for a brief moment, pure dismay crossed Murata’s eyes.

Then his face became totally unintelligible and, without a word, he silently turned his back at Wolfram and, his shoulders straight, he obliged. But, before leaving, he left the ring on the small table next to the door.

-&-

“According to yesterday’s information that Lady Flynn and King Saralegui shared with us, if we cross the border here”, and Murata put his right index on a point on the big map laying on the table in the middle of the woman’s office, “we should be able to make it safely enough inside Dai Shimaron.”

“Yes, but then what?”, Yuuri suddenly intervened, trying focusing on the matter at hand right now instead of on the strange atmosphere hanging over his friend and Wolfram since breakfast. “How can we reach the capital undetected and, moreover, the palace?”

At that, everybody – except Wolfram – turned toward the sage while he slowly turned his gaze on Saralegui.

“Your Highness: do you happen to have any news about your brother’s arrival?”, he vaguely asked and the half-Shinzoku king smirked at them.

“Actually, he’ll reach here in six days. I received a pigeon from him at dawn with a note that said he was already on the move. By the way, I’m not at all sure of his willingness about joining your plan”, he pointed out. “Knowing Yelshi, he might have decided to come here just in order to canvass your intentions about the situation in Dai Shimaron. After all, Seisakoku Empire is still neutral, and it is not part of our League…”

“By the way, Your Highness”, Murata promptly replied while broadly smiling at him, a challenging light into his black eyes, “I still confide in my innate diplomatic abilities to convince him to _actively_ join our plan.”, he stated, and Sara’s grin widened too.

“Now, _that_ I would really like to see.”

-&-

“Hey, Murata”, Yuuri voluntarily stayed behind when everybody left after more or less an hour’s meeting. “Do you have a moment, please?”, he asked him in a low voice in order that nobody else could hear him, and Ken couldn’t stop himself in time before lightly sighing at him.

“I deeply appreciate your concern, Shibuya”, the sage started gently with a big smile, but soon his tone grew harsher and his smile colder while evidently aiming at keeping his distance from the Maoh and diverting him from his intent, “but would you please refrain yourself from prying into my private affairs? I’m really _not_ in the mood to humor your curiosity, now.”

“Why are you always so cold to me? We are friends, Murata! And you know that it’s not just mere curiosity. I only want to be of some help! Why can’t you understand my good faith?!”

At that, Ken heaved a sigh.

“It’s not that I don’t understand that you are in good faith, Shibuya…”, he replied, disarmed. “But I don’t like you meddling where you’re not belonging. Especially when it’s concerning Wolfram.”

“But you are both my friends! It’s obvious that I’m concerned! As much as it’s obvious that I want to help!”

“Shibuya: I might not seem like that to you, but I’m a very, _very_ jealous and possessive person”, he remarked, “and you are the _first_ _love_ of one of the only _three_ persons I loved in more than four thousand years, not to mention his ex-fiancé for almost six years. Do you understand that, even if you are my friend and I like you and respect you as one of the best Maoh Shin Makoku ever had, I really _don’t_ like the idea of speaking to you about Wolfram, don’t you?”, he finally snapped at him, running out of patience like rarely happened, and, maybe for the first time, those words made Yuuri finally realize the situation and his thorny position in that matter, and every possible further reply just died in the Maoh’s throat.

“Please, Shibuya”, Ken went on, now in a softer and gentler tone from before, “take it in good heart, but _please_ ”, he repeated, “just try to stay out of my affairs with Wolfram. I know that you mean no harm to us, but, even if it wasn’t your fault in the first place, you and your six years’ behavior and attitude made the both of us suffer and I’m not a good or soft hearted enough person to forgive you that easily, even if I know that you suffered this situation as much as we did. I’    m sorry, Shibuya. _Really_ sorry, but please: leave me alone.”, he concluded attempting a comforting smile at him but probably failing given the hurt he read on Yuuri’s face at his plea.

Nonetheless, the Maoh obliged and, with a pat on his friend’s shoulder that meant more than a thousand words, he left Murata in the studio alone and, crossed the corner of the corridor, he stopped for a moment to watch at the redhead who was standing a few meters above, leaning against the wall.

A brief look was enough for Yuuri to know that he had heard their conversation so, with a heavy sigh, he just fixed his eyes in the spy’s and he was ready to say something when Yozak spoke first, forerunning him.

“I have already sent Conrad after Wolfram, so you have nothing to worry about, Heika. And by the way”, he added when Yuuri made to walk past him after a short – slightly irritated – nod, “Geika’s words might have been not very kind to you, but you really shouldn’t take them at heart. He really likes you very much, and he defended you with everything he had when you sent him to me in order to have _that_ chat on the ship… You know, Heika”, he went on, a little sheepishly all of a sudden, “I had been pretty angry at you, and actually it wasn’t just there and then, but the sage, for making me see reason, even dug in his past in order to make me understand _why_ I was acting stupid while being jealous at you… and he might have lived for thousands of years, but he is still human, and jealousy is just a greatly irrational feeling, something you can’t control easily… you have a noble and strong heart and might be above something so trivial and vile, but not everybody is as great as you, Heika. So, please, allow me and Conrad to handle this in your place, and I promise you that whatever is going on between those two, it’ll be solved, a way or another, before we leave from here.”, Yozak stated serious and, in front of this, Yuuri could only nod again in acknowledgement of his resolution and sincerity.

Then the Maoh muttered what sounded a slightly annoyed “thank you” at the redhead while finally walking past the man and he quickly reached the peace and silence of his own quarters: evidently, no one seemed to need him at all, even if he was _willing_ to give his help to whom he cared the most... so, at least for now, he didn’t have much of a choice if not just sit down and wait for ‘things’ to happen.


	5. Feeling Guilty

Wolfram unconsciously hastened his pace while walking back to his quarters at the end of the meeting and, when he finally reached his rooms, he slammed his parlor’s door behind his back, his breath short and heavy. Then, dispirited, he laid against the wooden panel and let himself slide down, curling up in a ball, his arms around his legs and his face hidden between his knees.

He didn’t know how much time he had passed still in that position, but suddenly he found his hand moving on its own and digging in his right pocket, and his fist closing around the small object that he had instinctively taken with him before leaving his rooms.

He felt his cheeks getting wet and, angered with himself and his vulnerability he was letting out despite his resolution to be strong after his hard decision, he coarsely wiped them away with the sleeve of his shirt.

 _‘How could Ken act this calm and collected?_ ’, he thought, confused and disheartened at the same time.

He had addressed him by his title on purpose before, in order to hurt him and make him give up on him for good, even if the sage had just finished to say that he wouldn’t have given up on him, that he wouldn’t have accepted his refusal and that he was in love with him and he wouldn’t have possibly found anyone better than he was. But still it hurt to see that, after all that he had affirmed, two mere simple words like ‘Your Eminence’ had been enough to make him change his mind completely, to make him withdraw his own statements…

Was Ken really all talk? Had he really been right when he had accused him of being like that out of anger?

Or mayhap the Sage had decided to act in according with his own words, with his accusations… in according with the expectations he had for him in his too often pessimist mind…

Was he finally giving him what he really deserved?

But, even so, Wolfram knew now that Ken was too much for him: the Great Sage deserved better than a cheater, even if _he_ had been the one who had first thought about letting him take someone else while watching…

And it was true – because he had seen it in that black eyes of his – that Ken had actually thought about it, but still he hadn’t agreed on that… and he knew that Ken could be very possessive at times, so maybe, even if the idea had crossed his mind, he still would have refused Saralegui’s offer…

But then too there was the fact that Ken had seen him literally _melt_ while kissing another man in front of his very eyes and, as if it wasn’t enough in itself, he had seen him almost _jump_ _him_ on a whim…

And what would have happened if Saralegui hadn’t stopped him that time? When would he have come back to his senses?

And worse: would he really have been able to stop?

Wolfram really didn’t know why, but Saralegui had a way of making him go insane as much as Ken did.

That past night he had found it almost impossible to sleep and when, after dawn, he had finally lost against slumber, he had woken up not long afterwards with a hard on and the far too vivid memory of his dream of a disheveled king Saralegui under him, screaming his name in ecstasy…

Then someone chose that exact moment – when his mind was back at that mental image – to knock at his door, and Wolfram suddenly went still, frozen in place.

He didn’t reply, and a moment later a second knocking came.

When even this time the person outside there received no answer, Wolfram finally recognized his brother’s voice out there, asking him to let him come in, and, despite himself and his better judgment, he found he had gotten more than a bit disappointed: he didn’t want to see Ken that instant, because he wouldn’t have been able to get out of it unscathed if it really had been him outside there, but nevertheless he would have wanted it to be him and no one else…

He wanted Ken to fight for him… to keep his word… even if, this way, he would have only suffered more.

Because he _deserved_ to suffer. And he deserved to suffer far, far more than Ken deserved it…

He swallowed hard but still he didn’t reply.

He didn’t want to see anyone, much less his unfaithful brother, because Yuuri and even Yozak could have been able to forgive him, at least in part, for his behavior, but he still hadn’t.

And also: he himself had had the courage and strength to give up on the person he loved – because it went without saying that he loved Ken from the bottom of his heart – taking full responsibility of his own unfaithfulness, where his brother didn’t – and he didn’t for a few _decades_ – and even tried, behind his back, to sneak his fiancé away from his own blood.

“Please, Wolfram: let me come in. I would really like to have a chat with you…”, Wolfram heard from the other side of the door, but he just ignored him.

“Please, Wolfram.”, Conrad repeated at his silence after a short while, “I’m still your brother… I just want to be of some help to you---” he started to say but he had to stop midsentence in front of the door suddenly opening wide and of Wolfram’s livid expression abruptly showing in front of him.

“ _How dare you?!_ ”, the blond mazoku hissed in his face. “ _My_ _brother_ , eh?! _Hmph_!”, he scoffed and retorted dryly, and Conrad diverted his eyes despite himself, more than a little mortified.

Not that Wolfram could have cared less about it that instant.

“You have no right to stand in front of my door, offering your help, when you deceived me.”, he piled it on, unmerciful.

“Wolfram…”, Conrad tried, but to no avail.

“I believed you when you said that everything was a misunderstanding when I was still engaged to Yuuri, and then when you offered me your support after the annulment of my engagement with him. And I regret having gone out of my way to even _kiss_ you in the stable that morning when you offered me what _I_ _thought_ was your _kindness_. You must have laughed pretty hard at my back together with all those slimy nobles who only know how to stab people behind their back!”, he accused him, but Conrad only shook his head and sighed in response – which made Wolfram even angrier.

“And now you give me that conceited look!?”, he went on, literally starting to fume. “Don’t you know what _shame_ is, _Weller_?!”, he hissed, calling him by his father’s name as he hadn’t done for the last six years, and that unsettled Conrad more than he was willing to admit.

“Wolfram, I am deeply sorry. I rue my acts and behavior towards everybody of you”, he stated formally, “but can we please continue this conversation inside?”, he humbly asked, but Wolfram was too mad at him – and, right now, at himself too – to be lenient towards his brother.

“And why should I allow you inside when you are the last person in the world that I wanted to see and to speak to and when I’m totally not in the mood for the kind of conversation you expect me to pursue when I have my own affairs to take care of?”, he spat and suddenly, at these words, for no clear reason, Conrad’s expression hardened and he got serious as if he was going to swordfight an opponent.

“Wolfram”, he stated, his eyes cold, “I know I had been an asshole”, he blatantly declared and his bluntness left Wolfram momentarily at a loss for words, “and that I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but I want to make amend to you all, and you _are_ my brother and I love you. And I know that something really bad happened between you and the Sage, or else you would have _never_ taken off the ring he had given you, and I want to be of some help. I might not be a great fan of the Sage, but after that first day on the ship I saw that something changed between you two, and it’s not just the fact that you shared the same bed for the first time. Wolfram…”, he sighed in front of the deep flushing of his brother’s cheeks at that last remark, “I’d like to be of some support to you like I haven’t been in the past few years, and don’t look at me like that”, he admonished him, “it’s not because there’s no conflict of interest this time. It’s because you’re my precious little brother and I want you to be happy. And the Sage loves you as a lover, as you deserve to be loved, so I want to cherish your relationship with him and to listen and support you, especially during bad moments.”

And, at these words, a single tear left Wolfram’s right eye and lined his slightly reddening cheek.

The blond dried it right away with the side of his hand, still closed in a fist around what had originally been Rufus’ ring, and sheepishly diverted his eyes.

“There’s nothing more to cherish. It’s over.”, he stated, his voice more unstable than he would have liked it to be, and Conrad’s eyes widened in shock.

“What?”, he stuttered, still incredulous, but this time Wolfram only sighed and stepped aside, allowing his brother inside his rooms.

After a long moment of silent shock, Conrad finally entered and Wolfram closed the door behind his brother’s back, showing him the sofa at the other side of the parlor and following him there.

“What happened?”, the half-mazoku asked his brother after a very long pause and Wolfram snorted despite himself while sitting down in front of him.

“It might sound more than slightly ironic coming from me and being told to you”, the blond started, “but I turned out to be unfaithful to the man I love, and the Daikenja deserves better than a cheater.”

Conrad’s eyes and mouth widened in pure shock at Wolfram’s revelation and couldn’t believe at his own ears. He was going to ask him how that could be, _with whom_ he had cheated on him, and if these harsh words were coming from the Sage’s, but every comment or question that had come to mind in that short moment of bewilderment died on his tongue at his brother’s next words: “So I broke up with him and now our brief engagement is over for good.”

“ _You_ broke up?!” was all that Conrad had been able to say for a while, and Wolfram’s gaze became darting.

“Yes”, he only replied, but the older man knew what that single word hided in itself, and part of that spoke about his brother’s pride and, by comparison, about the cowardice and treachery _he_ had shown instead during his life, with his bad choices and decisions, and with his shameful acts until then.

It took Conrad a while to recover from his astonishment and his guilt feelings that last affirmation had awoken in him, but then his brain started to work again and, together with it, his ability to think and reason.

“What happened that made you affirm that you cheated on him?”, he queried, still a bit dubious given that there weren’t many people around with whom his brother would have been able to cheat on the Sage, and, given his brother’s reaction when Lady Flynn had first made her entrance the previous day and the jealousy he had shown towards Yuuri’s response to her, the only plausible option in his eyes was the Maoh… and that was a really unlikely possibility, so maybe the cheating was just in his brother’s head… and, if it really was the case, then Wolfram’s decision to call off his engagement with the Sage was _unnecessarily extreme!_

At that question, however, Wolfram refused to give an answer, but Conrad didn’t miss his brother’s slight blushing in response, and it puzzled him more than just a bit.

“You don’t need to know the details of it”, the blond dryly replied, “and, now that you know what happened, please, would you be so kind as to leave me my privacy, brother? I need to get ready for lunch.” he formally stated at last and, in front of that, still shocked by what he had gathered and Wolfram’s confession, Conrad finally complied and went back to his own rooms, where he found his husband waiting for him.

 

“Did you speak to the Sage?”, the brunet captain asked Yozak while sinking in the loveseat in his private parlor next to his husband and tiredly resting his head on the redhead’s shoulder.

“No”, the spy flatly replied, and Conrad had to openly pry further for him to elaborate that mere ‘no’.

“Heika stopped behind and asked him himself, but the Sage wasn’t in the mood to talk to him given the evident conflict of interest between them, so, given that Geika is a really tough nut to crack, I thought it better to come and listen to what you had gathered from your brother before going and having a chat with him.”, he finally explained, “but I actually already heard, so there’s no need for you to tell me.”, he sighed, and Conrad sighed back.

“I think Wolfram had gone too far for something that obviously have happened in his head only, and just yesterday.”, Conrad stated and suddenly Yozak grabbed him by the shoulder and moved his husband in order to be able to watch at him in the eye.

“What do you mean by that?”, he asked, evidently perplexed, and Conrad sighed again.

“There’s no way that Heika and him had an intercourse of any sort between yesterday morning and today, so it must have been in his head only.”, he clarified and then it was Yozak’s turn to sigh.

“You got it wrong, Conrad. It’s not Heika.”, he only said, and the brunet looked at him with wide eyes.

“Then _who_?”, he asked, totally baffled, and Yozak heaved a sigh for the umpteenth time.

“Knowing the person in question, I’m not sure, as a brother, you really want to know the details of what actually happened yesterday night…”, he replied in a mournful tone, and Conrad finally gathered whom his husband was talking about and face-palmed himself, in a gesture almost as dramatic as Gunter would have made in a situation like that one in his place.

“…please, tell me you’re joking…”

“I wish I was: I actually don’t like him more than you do, my dear…”

-&-

That day lunch was spent in a quite gloomy atmosphere, and Saralegui’s witty and sometimes deliberately _cruel_ remarks here and there certainly didn’t help brightening it up.

When they finished eating, all of them seemed grateful to be able to move from there and retire to their own quarters.

Yuuri was going to do the same that Lady Flynn called him back, her tone radiating a self-confidence she actually wasn’t feeling.

“Your Majesty… would you like to join me for a stroll in the garden?”, she asked him with a bright smile and Yuuri slightly blushed despite himself.

“Gladly”, he replied, maybe a little too enthusiastic, “and I might repeat myself a lot, but please: just call me Yuuri… I really, really hate honorifics…”

He flushed again while saying that and the woman smirked a bit in front of his too obvious reaction to her invitation.

They wandered around in the gardens in a comfortable silence for a while until Flynn walked past him and sat down on a bench along the footpath.

“It’s my favorite spot”, she stated, and Yuuri soon joined her there and looked around.

“I can understand why. It’s beautiful.”, he said “Surely Wolf would really like to see it too”, he added without thinking and then he sighed.

At that, a heavy silence fell upon them and lasted for a while until the woman broke it.

“…do you still love him?”, she asked out of the blue and Yuuri jerked out of his train of thought.

“ _What_?!”, he dumbly asked back. Then he somewhat registered the question in his head and started to chuckle, his hand scratching his nape in clear embarrassment. “No, I never liked him that way, but he’s my best friend, and yes, I love him very much.”

“So you are not jealous of his new relationship with the Great Sage?”, she pried further into it and now a bitter smile answered her question.

“Maybe in a way, yes, I am.”, Yuuri confessed and sighed again.

She didn’t reply, so the double black decided to go on.

“Murata is monopolizing him…", he explained. "He can be very possessive and territorial at times. Something you wouldn’t say just looking at him. He’s always smiling and scheming”, he went on, “and you never know what’s crossing his mind. But Wolfram makes him greedy, and jealous, and harsh, and moody…”

“He makes him more human…”, Flynn abruptly stepped in and Yuuri suddenly turned towards her, and their gazes met until the Maoh went back to watch at the horizon.

“Maybe…”, he conceded, pensive, his eyes lost somewhere over the beautiful scenery.

“Maybe it’s the real him…”, she added, pondering too, and Yuuri heaved another sigh in response, not knowing what to think of it.

“…now they argued”, Yuuri continued, “and it has to be something pretty bad given that Wolf took off the ring Murata gave him, but Murata forbade me to _meddle_ in his affairs!”, he suddenly complained, frustrated. “ _I hate it oh so much!_ ”, he grunted into his hands now covering his face, his elbows on his knees, and Flynn gently patted his shoulder, supportive.

“I miss Wolfram by my side…”, Yuuri admitted after a while, and, in response to those last words, the woman started to draw smooth circles on his back with her soft and small hand in a comforting way.

“Love affairs are something very private, and even when it happens - and sadly for you, that's not the case, it seems - that your friends actually come to you for help, you need to handle the situation as carefully as possible… usually it’s better to leave people handle their own love matters on their own, even if you, as their friend, suffer while watching them hurt themselves… if their love is strong enough”, she went on, “they will eventually overcome all the adversities they will meet along the way, otherwise, maybe, it wasn’t worth it. But that’s something you can’t decide for them.”

Yuuri pondered over Flynn’s words for a while before sighing for the hundredth time.

“I still don’t like it… I don’t like watching while my friends suffer without the possibility to do anything for them.”

Lady Flynn sadly chuckled at the younger man sat next to her and finally stood up, putting herself right in front of him, her hands stretched out at him.

Yuuri studied her for a short while before grabbing them, accepting her help to stand up from the bench. But then, when they found themselves at a few inches from one another, she filled the last gap that separated them and, raising on her toes, she lightly brushed her lips against the younger man’s ones, leaving him totally speechless.

“I’ve always liked that side of you, Yuuri.”, she commented. Then she made to go, leaving him there, but he promptly stopped her by grabbing her by her wrist.

She turned towards him, not expecting Yuuri to actually stop her and almost confiding that he would have been far too shocked to react right away, and she grew even more stunned when she suddenly found herself in Yuuri’s embrace, her body against the solid one of the usually shy man standing there, younger than her by almost ten years, that showed to be far manlier than she would have ever guessed.

“I like you too, so don’t run away.”, he simply replied at last, serious, strong and terribly _erotic_ , his black eyes fixed in her blue ones as if the world around them didn’t exist anymore, before he started a new kiss that had _nothing_ of the previous one that she had given him, and she felt a young girl at her first love again.

-&-

“ _Yes_.”, Murata spat – not a question – at the end of that _vexing_ day around ten p.m., when he heard a knock at his door.

At that, a red head bumped inside, a wide smile on his friendly face.

“Yo, Geika!”

“Not you too, Yozak. _Please_!”, Ken heaved a sigh, exasperated: first had been Yuuri that morning, then Lady Flynn that late afternoon, and he even had to endure king Saralegui and his witty remarks during the whole day… and now him too?! He had all the rights to feel annoyed, did he not?!  
“And moreover”, the sage went on, “I’m trying to think of a plan for our mission: I can’t be always interrupted, or else we might leave _in_ _a year_ instead than just a couple of weeks!”

Yozak just smirked at his sudden and unusual snap, knowingly.

“Actually, I came here just to tell you that if you wanted someone to talk to, I’m always available for a chat and a booze… I’m a _discreet_ spy, you know?”, he winked at him and then soon closed the door behind himself once more, not waiting for a reply.

Then, in front of such a reaction, Ken heaved a disarmed sigh and shook his head at the once again shut door, defeated.

“I will keep it in mind, my friend…”, he only replied in a mild voice, but he knew that Yozak would have heard him anyway.


	6. Friendship

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I noticed that these last few chapters are pretty short for my standards... by the way, I don't know why but, at least for now, this part of the story is just calling for it...  
> In a way, it's better for you, because it actually becomes easier for me to post new chapters more often! ;)  
> Soooo... what to say? XD  
> Enjoy :)

For five days – _five whole days!_ – Ken had buried himself in work, trying not to think and, in his heart, confiding that Wolfram just needed some time to calm himself down and reconsider.

But the truth was that he knew Wolfram far too well, and he knew that, when he put his mind on something, _that_ was, and he wouldn’t have changed his mind midway…

At the _thirteenth_ pen he had broken in less than three hours that day, Ken finally decided that a bender wasn’t a bad idea anymore. So, he abruptly rose from his seat, kept out his blue lenses, wore them and then left his rooms, slamming the heavy door behind his back and going looking for Yozak.

Actually, that last point on his mental list took him almost half an hour, because the redhead seemed to be _nowhere_ to be found.

Then, after a pretty long while spent walking randomly up and down the mansion, Ken just stopped and called himself an idiot: so he flapped his heels and finally stopped only when he got in front of Conrad’s door.

For a brief moment he hesitated, but then his exasperation got the better of him and he knocked.

Not long afterwards the tall brunet showed at the door and he was slightly disheveled – not something that you could see often coming from him – and watched at the sage, clearly surprised to see him standing there, and, moreover, with his blue contacts on inside the house.

“Is Yozak here?”, Ken cut short, not in the mood for formalities of any sort – and even less with the man now standing in front of him – and Conrad raised an eyebrow in front of the sage’s unusual curtness, but then nodded and showed him inside, hinting at the sofa at the corner of the parlor.

“Please, wait here a moment.”, Conrad told him and disappeared behind his bedroom door; and Ken wasn’t stupid or blind: a quick glance was more than enough to gather what he had interrupted… however, even if he knew that he would have had to at least apologize for his sudden intrusion, he replied nothing and just went to sit down, waiting in silence.

Less than a couple of minutes later Yozak finally showed up and went to sit on the armchair in front of the sage while Conrad decided to just let them talk without intruding on them.

“Yo, Geika!” the spy greeted friendly, but his gaze was studying him, and the sage knew.

“Yozak!”, Ken replied likewise, but the smile he gave him was somewhat tired and the spy noticed.

“…you have your lenses on.”, Yozak pointed out and smirked, knowingly, after a while they had spent in silence one in front of the other, and Ken snorted in response but then showed him one of his best bright – fake – smiles.

“I was wondering if you would like to accompany me to the city”, he replied, “but I guess I just interrupted something much more fun here…”, he suggested, but Yozak wasn’t a prude and found nothing in that witty remark to flush about.

“Actually”, Yozak retorted with a smug and mischievous grin, “you did”, he flatly declared. “But your word is my command, Your Eminence.”, he stated a little more serious than his usual before going back to the flirtatious tone. “Just tell me if you want me as a man or a woman, and I’ll follow you wherever you want.”

By the way, what neither him nor Conrad on the other side of the door were expecting from the sage were the man’s few words that followed, uttered in a peculiarly grave tone.

“Today I need a friend.”, Ken stated only, and in front of that declaration Yozak suddenly sobered and met his gaze while abruptly standing up.

“Then, no need to change.”, he replied and, offering him a sighing smile, he silently invited him to follow him. “But I expect everything to be on you. After all I’m just a poor spy, and I’m broke…”, he winked at Ken and Ken smiled back in return and shook his head in resignation while finally raising up from his seat too.

“I guess I have no choice, then”, he replied and then they were both by the door, ready to go out, when Ken put a hand over the redhead’s shoulder and whispered to his ears only something that made Yozak brightly smile back at him: “By the way”, the sage had added in fact, “sorry and thank you.”

“It’s my pleasure.”, Yozak softly replied and then, abruptly, he put his head back inside the room and shouted to his husband: “We might be late, Conrad! So tell the others not to count us for dinner!”

After that, not waiting for a reply, he just closed the door behind himself and guided Ken to the better tavern in the city, where they took place on a table in a corner and hit the bottle until they couldn’t stand straight anymore, one in desperation and the other one in moral support.

-&-

“So that’s it…”, Ken replied to his friend and _grunted_ at a certain point during their drinking session. “Sure his mind is convoluted!”, he shook his head and sighed heavily, his head aching like hell due only in part to the excess of alcohol.

“…I must say that I overheard what happened with the bratty king in your rooms the other night…”, Yozak confessed at last, the large amount of alcohol running through his veins lowering his guard as much as his judgment, because he learned a moment too late that he would have better kept that information for himself.

“I don’t like people snooping around in my affairs, Yozak.”, the sage, in fact, abruptly snapped at him, and the spy hadn’t seen it coming. “Even if it’s you.”, he continued, harsh and caustic. “It is one thing if _I’m_ the one who shares something with you, but quite something else if _you_ are the one who pries where you don’t belong.”, concluded at last a peculiarly pretty angry sage, and the alcohol, together with his growing headache, sure didn’t help to keep his temper at bay.

“I’m sorry, but it couldn’t be helped”, the redhead soon attempted to justify himself, understanding his mistake in making his tongue slip just too late. “You know I have far too good ears for my own good, and your room is just too near mine.”, he flatly explained, but Ken needed more than a few minutes to calm himself enough to accept the truth of the matter.

Then, he finally heaved a sigh and shrugged in resignation.

“At least you are my ally…”, the sage commented at last and sneered, and Yozak, in return, feigned a reverence and grinned back at him.

“ _Now and forever!!_ ”, he utterly declared, and then burst out laughing, followed by Murata not long after.

After all, the sage could do nothing about it, and what was done was done: there was no use crying over spilled milk…


	7. It was all a misunderstanding…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Three chapters in three days! XD I'm impressed by myself LOL  
> It's true that they're pretty short, but hey... YAY! XD

It was past midnight when Yozak and Ken finally retired back to the mansion but, after what the sage had learned from the redhead about Wolfram’s motives behind his totally one-sided decision of breaking up with him, an enlightenment was utterly due, and the sooner, the better.

So Murata just said goodnight to Yozak and, unconcerned about the late hour, he just showed up at his fiancé’s door.

He actually had to knock a bunch of times before being finally able to hear something move on the other side of the door, and Yuuri, who was sleeping only two doors ahead from there, actually showed up first to check what was going on at such a late hour. Then, when he saw Murata in front of Wolfram’s private quarters, he just closed his door once more and, after a very deep resigned sigh, he went back to sleep.

“ _What!_ ”, Wolfram hissed at whoever was at his door and had woken him up in the middle of the night, and he was still half-asleep and so much pissed off that the idea that it could have been Ken out there never crossed his mind, not even for a second. So, when he found himself face to face with the sage after almost six days spent _avoiding_ him, Wolfram literally freaked out and slammed the door shut back again on a whim.

After a moment of surprised silence, then, Ken knocked again, but this time Wolfram – now definitely awake – knew who was on the other side and just ignored it.

Actually, if he would have wanted, Murata could have just lowered the handle and entered, because Wolfram had actually slammed the door shut in his face, but he hadn’t locked it. But he knew the proud mazoku enough not to take that liberty without his consent, if he really wanted him to at least _start_ to listen to what he had to say. So he just continued to knock and waited for him to eventually get tired of the loud thuds…

And he didn’t have to wait for long…

“ _Just cut it out already!_ ”, the blond finally gave in and hissed at the sage, not just annoyed but more filled with murderous intent. He would have shouted at his face, but he really didn’t want to wake up more people than the ones his ex-fiancé – because for him now Ken was just that – had woken up already.

“Let me come in and I’ll stop right away.”, the sage threatened in a surprisingly calm and steady tone, and sadly Wolfram knew that he had no choice if not comply, so, heaving an irritated sigh, he stepped aside in order to leave enough room for him to enter and then shut the door again behind themselves.

“What do you want.”, he demanded, caustic, while activating the horyoku mechanism connected to a switch on the wall next to the entrance and switching on the lights in the room, and his tone was more the one for a statement than a question.

Then the sage, not far from the door, just stood steady in front of Wolfram and fixed his still blue eyes – given that he didn’t took the time to pass by his own rooms and take off the contacts when he had come back from the tavern – in the green and sharp ones of his lover.

“I thought you were angry at me.”, he stated serious and Wolfram stared at him with blank eyes for a moment before finally collecting himself again.

“Well”, he retorted at last, “after the big show you put on in front of my quarters, even if I weren’t at first I would have gained all the rights to be it by now, don’t you believe?”, he spat scathingly, and Murata couldn’t refrain himself from sneering at the sharp remark, reaction that made the blond owner of the room definitely fly off the handle.

“What’s so funny, now?!”, he complained, offended by the utterly rude reaction of the man in front of him. “You woke up half of the palace, and for what?! To just annoy me with your drunkard’s ravings in the middle of the night?! Do you have any shred of sense left in that blunt head of yours, or the title of ‘wise man’ is just for show? Good grief!”, he snapped at him and then the sage bluntly burst out laughing in response.

“I love you, Wolfram.”, he declared totally out of the blue while still laughing, and the blond abruptly flushed despite himself in front of that blatant declaration.

At his shocked silence, then, Ken took advantage of the situation and resumed his previous topic, which was also the reason why he was there in his room right now.

“Wolfram, I’m starting to believe that you aren’t angry at me for the reasons I thought you were at first.”, he stated going back serious all of a sudden.

“What?”, Wolfram asked again, flabbergasted by the abrupt flight of fancy of the sage, and Ken heaved a sigh and lightly snorted.

“I actually thought that your drastic decision to call off our engagement was due to your being angry at me for the conversation I had with king Saralegui before you joined us in my quarters the other night.”, he explained calmly and Wolfram blinked in response a couple of times before understanding where that conversation was actually going.

“ _I am_ angry for that.”, Wolfram spat at last, but Ken only sighed and slowly walked towards him.

“But you are actually angrier at me for _another_ reason, are you not?”, he queried further, and Wolfram swallowed hard despite himself and slightly diverted his eyes for a moment. A moment too much for Ken not to notice.

“I don’t know what you mean”, then Wolfram retorted, feigning ignorance, but Ken snorted at him, knowingly, which made the blond mazoku snap again.

“Then speak aloud and tell me what you think you understood! I’m waiting!”, he bitterly rebutted, but maybe he shouldn’t have for his own good…

“You didn’t want me to ignore you these past few days”, Ken declared at that, and Wolfram’s cheeks reddened despite his attempt to keep his self-control in check.

“You’re wrong.”, Wolfram replied, harsh and scathing, but the sage scoffed at him.

“No, I’m not.”

“ _Yes, you are_.”, retorted the blond, who didn’t want to give in, and Ken only sighed, but his voice became sharper and his tone more serious all of a sudden again.

“Then, Wolfram: let me rephrase it in a more accurate way.”, he corrected himself and Wolfram gritted his teeth and clenched his fists at the sage’s remark, but, despite himself, he swallowed hard once more. “I thought you were angry at me because I didn’t refuse Saralegui’s offer right away and, instead, I seriously took it into consideration.”, he explained and then went on, “but I was wrong”, he stated, “because it seems that you decided on your own to call off our engagement because of what had happened _later_ between you two and in front of my eyes.”

“And what makes you declare so?”, Wolfram wittingly replied, but, the more that conversation went on, the more he knew the ground under his steps was getting rough and slippery…

“Your own words.”, Ken specified then, and Wolfram, at that last remark, finally bit his bottom lip, that simple gesture the final proof that Ken had actually hit the nail on the head. So he just struck while the iron was hot. “You affirmed that I deserved better than you. Those had been your very words, Wolfram, if you remember well.”

“And you replied that no one was better than me”, Wolfram snapped at last, unable to keep it bottled inside anymore, “that you would have _fought for me_ , but then you just _completely_ ignored me all this time, acting as if there had been nothing between us! As if yours were just _empty_ _words_ , and all that _after_ _two_ _mere_ _words_ coming from me: ‘Your Eminence’.”, he stated sullenly, and then he rubbed it in. “Those two simple words”, he went on, unmerciful, “were enough to make you desist from your _great_ promises and declarations. _That’s the strength of your love for me_!”, and with that last utter and bitter accusation he finally concluded his tirade, showing, with that, that he had bottled up inside himself far more resentment than he had thought he was actually feeling at first. Then he scoffed at him and, arms crossed, he added a conceited “not very much indeed” that made Ken heave a sigh in reply.

After a long moment, then, the sage shook his head in resignation and closed his eyes for an instant before going back to fix them in the green darting ones of his lover.

“But now I’m here, am I not?”, he evenly pointed out at last, but Wolfram pinpointed back in a sharp tone: “Almost six days later.”, and, at that, Ken couldn’t refrain himself from lightly chuckling in response.

“It’s all due to a little misunderstanding, after all”, the sage notified. “Because, as I already explained to you, I thought that you were angry at me.”

“And I told you that I was!”, Wolfram quickly retorted, but Ken chortled again.

“You _were_ …?”, he remarked, suddenly smug, and Wolfram flushed in embarrassment and annoyance.

“I _am_.”, he quickly corrected himself, but how could he stay _really_ angry – not just a pose – at the sage for long when he acted like that with him? When he handled him oh so well?!

But still, he didn’t want to give in so soon either…

“By the way”, then Wolfram tried to change topic, too tired by now to go on for long without letting him win. “That’s enough chitchat for tonight. It’s late.”, he sharply replied painting an annoyed pout on his face. “And you stink of alcohol and vomit, so just go back to your quarters to take a bath and leave me sleep at last.”

But Ken just sneered at him in response and walked towards him instead.

“Convince me, Wolfram. Then I promise you that I’ll leave.”, he provoked him, but Wolfram was really too proud to surrender to his lover’s instigation – tiredness or not.

“If you don’t want me to treat you as a molester and hit you before throwing you out of my private rooms, it’s better if you just leave without complaints.”, Wolfram threatened then in reply, but, even if Murata had mostly sobered up, the remnants of alcohol that still ran through his veins gave him more boldness than he normally had – and he could be pretty bold just normally…

“WHA--- _what do you think you are doing_?!”, the blond abruptly jerked and yelled at Ken’s sudden as much as uncalled for ministrations around his hips when the man had suddenly just kneeled in front of him and had provocatively started to raise his gown up with his _teeth_ while sneaking his gentle but definitely resolute hands under the soft fabric, slowly and sensually moving them up from his knees up until he found the strings that kept his underwear together.

By the way, even if Wolfram had actually freaked out a moment before, he didn’t stop him, nor he had stepped back from him.

He only stood there, still, shivering in anticipation despite himself and his better judgment.

So, in front of his lover’s compliance in spite of his contradictory words, Ken slowly moved back ever so slightly, his hands now keeping up the nightgown together with the edges of the blue strings of Wolfram’s underpants, and watched him in the eye, sizzling.

“You said I stink”, he replied then, teasing, a smug and vicious grin splitting his face in half while watching at his lover into his darkening green orbs, his mouth so near the blond’s groin that Wolfram could feel the warmth of Ken’s breath on his hardening arousal through the thin fabric of his underwear, “so I thought that if I did this”, the sage went on explaining, “you couldn’t complain anymore about it… or did you just prefer a _kiss_?”, he teased, and then, before Wolfram could decide to start complaining – not that the sage thought, given the actual circumstances, that it would have been his real intention anyway… – in a single expert movement Ken freed his fiancé’s manhood from its constriction and just took his stiff and already dripping tip into his mouth, eliciting a deep groan of pleasure from the blond proud demon now completely at his mercy once again after almost six days of abstinence from him.

“ _Ken I hate you oh so much!_ ”, Wolfram suddenly shouted in a panting mess, not long afterwards, starting pretty soon to shake uncontrollably and finally coming into his mouth, his hands on Ken’s shoulders in order to keep his balance.

Then, slowly, when Wolfram started to recover, the sage finally stood up again and passionately kissed him, knowing that his fiancé found _supremely_ _arousing_ the taste of his own cum mixed with the mind-blowing feeling of a deep, sloppy kiss.

“I know, love.”, Ken replied then, compliant. “I know…”, he repeated. Then, after a pause, he finally added something that left Wolfram slightly unsettled.

“By the way”, he stated, provocative, “you actually convinced me…”

“What?”, was all that Wolfram was – once more – able to dumbly ask, confused, and the sage, at that, just smirked at him in that infuriatingly way of his.

“You convinced me”, Ken repeated and then, after another brief pause, he clarified: “so now I’ll go back to my quarters and I’ll finally leave you sleep as you asked. Happy, now?”, he instigated again and, now totally mortified, Wolfram turned his back at him and stomped toward his bedroom door, slamming it hard behind himself while grunting an embittered “you’re such a teaser!” addressed at him that made Ken snicker at him before finally also leaving the now empty parlor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally a chapter worth the red rating! XD (at least in the end XD)  
> Also: those two needed to make up, didn't they? XD
> 
> BTW, I hope you enjoyed this last mini-chapter. ;)
> 
> Actually, I'd really like to know someone's opinion about this part of the story so far... the only friend I have that usually reads my stories actually doesn't like Sara, so it's become more difficult to fisically compel her to read what I'm writing right now, and I find it a little depressing...  
> So, please, if you have a minute, stop here and leave a comment, even if it's just something like "Hey you, what the heck are you doing? What's this crap." XD At least I would know that you care (at least a tiny bit, 'cause, actually, I'm a realist and I don't have many pretensions about it...)  
> Thanks ;)  
> Btw, if you're reading that crappy note it means that you've actually read pretty much of what I wrote in general, so, even if you won't leave a comment, I'll love you anyway XD (But I would actually prefer a comment, so I'll know who to give my love to ;) XD)


	8. That's King Saralegui for you...

The morning later, as it happened six days before at breakfast, Wolfram was again the last one who showed up, even after Sara, who liked to be the center of attention on all occasions, no exceptions, and who obviously manifested his discontentment with a witty remark that, however, everybody there just ignored.

The moment he had entered, Wolfram had crossed his gaze with the Sage and had blushed a dark shade of pink in front of the ‘little audience’ without being able to control himself. And, actually, everyone who knew him at least a little, also knew that his bad temper was totally unrelated with his ability to control his emotions for the most part – if not in full – in most occasions, especially if in public…

Instead then, his green orbs diverting everybody’s eyes, still too self-conscious of his embarrassing flushing when he had entered, Wolfram just had gone to sit next to his brother while muttering a peculiarly shy “good morning” at no one in particular and he had fixed his gaze on the plate that a servant took care of filling up with what he used to eat at breakfast without him having to tell him what to put inside of it.

Then, when he finally raised his hands over the edge of the table to grab the cutlery – still without looking at anyone around him in fear of another mortifying reaction against his will – everyone there noticed that the ring Murata had given him was back at its place, on the finger where Ken had put it on.

To that, Yuuri let a “Thank goodness!” slip his lips before being able to control himself, and Ken just turned towards him and raised a brow, but then he lightly chortled – feeling relieved at last as neither the night before he had actually felt – and _genuinely_ smiled at his friend, in truth a pretty rare occurrence, recently. At least towards him…

In front of such a reaction, then, the Maoh shook his head in resigned exasperation, and that made Ken snicker at him once more despite himself and his secret attempt to put some actual distance between them after their last not-too-friendly chat of six days before… but Ken was too cheerful to care now.

 

Actually – Yuuri suddenly started reasoning with himself while unconsciously posing his gaze first on Wolfram and then on Ken – he had always found difficult to connect with Murata – if not to interact – because he could never tell what was on his mind or when he was joking from when he was serious instead. And, since Wolfram had come into the picture and those two had actually met for the first time still five years before then, he could say that Ken’s actions really had grown more unpredictable and often obnoxious every time that his ex-fiancé was involved.

Maybe he should have noticed sooner that something smelled fishy about the way Murata acted every time that Wolfram was around, but if Wolf was right about anything at all about him, it actually was that he was a wimp…

Then, now that all that great misunderstanding of the engagement was being dealt with and everything between him and Wolf had been clarified and Murata had come into play, everything got – sadly – _more_ _complicated_.

It actually didn’t make much sense to Yuuri, because, in his mind, everything should have gotten easier by then instead. But still that was the reality, and he had to deal with it a way or another anyway, so he really had no reason to complain when he actually could do nothing about it in the first place…

So Yuuri sighed and finally turned the other way: at least those two pig-headed fools had started to make up – and he knew that the only thing still in the way now was Wolf’s pride, but he also knew the blond enough to predict that, between him and Murata, everything would have gotten into place eventually and soon enough.

Still: it was a fact that Yuuri missed Wolfram, and he missed him more with each passing day…

-&-

When, that afternoon, Yelshi finally arrived to Lady Flynn’s mansion together with three personal guards, Saralegui was the first one to reach him out there and, unlike his usual attitude towards everybody else, he warmly hugged his twin brother and kissed him on the cheek, a great smile painted on his face that everybody recognized as fake – Yelshi included.

“Finally, brother! I missed you so much! It’s almost a year since the last time we met. You could have come  to see me in Shou Shimaron! You know that you’re always welcome there, don’t you?”, Saralegui uttered with a pout – clearly as false as his previous smile – under the disconcerted eyes of the small covey around them in front of such a show of – plainly fake – family concern.

And Yelshi slightly flushed, probably more out of embarrassment for Sara’s contrived behavior than anything else.

“I had been busy, probably as much as you were, brother.”, the Seisakoku’s Emperor replied – more bitterly that everybody of them remembered him to speak and act – his cheeks still pink, but Sara went on, not caring to acknowledge Yelshi’s reluctance towards his empty and ostentatious pleasantries.

“By the way”, the older brother said in a cheerful tone, “you must be tired after your long trip. I’ll accompany you to your quarters.”, he offered, and then he added, acting as if it was his palace and he was the master of the house, “I asked Lady Flynn here to make some arrangements so that you could sojourn next to my quarters, in case you should need anything during your stay!”, Sara enthusiastically declared, and, by that time, everybody there – even Lady Flynn and, more surprisingly, Yuuri – had decided that interfering in that conversation wasn’t worth their efforts, because there would have been no way to make Saralegui change his mind about those arrangements he had worked on so hard for the gods only knew what reasons. And Yelshi alone obviously could do nothing to deter his brother from showing him the way to the rooms he had chosen for him to stay in…

-&-

When the last servant who brought Yelshi’s luggage into his rooms left and the young emperor had finally dismissed the two guards outside his quarters until further notice, Sara, from behind him, skimmed a hand on purpose over his brother’s hip to reach the door and lock it and, with the other hand, he sensually brushed Yelshi’s hair behind his ear.

“Finally, Yelshi.”, Saralegui suggestively whispered into his twin’s ear, his hot breath against his neck, eliciting a shiver – impossible to hide – through Yelshi’s entire body. “Tell me…”, he went on with the same allusive tone, “do you still wear my gift to you for our last birthday?”, and, that said, he promptly moved his right hand down over his younger brother’s groin and groped him hard, smirking to the confirmation he found there.

Mortified, Yelshi didn’t reply and just avoided Sara’s eyes. So, at his twin’s silence, the Shou Shimaron’s king finally spoke again.

“I thought you would have removed it by now, and never hearing of you for ten months and nineteen days had only confirmed that belief of mine as time went on… or did you just wear it back before meeting me here in order to humor me?”, he asked, a veil of curiosity surfacing from his voice, and Yelshi, his mortification growing further and further every minute, blankly locked his gaze with a spot on the floor, his reaction yelling a silent ‘ _I’ve been so stupid to believe you and your menaces!_ ’ together with a snarl of pain and a strangled groan that made Sara indulge in a complacent smile.

“Don’t give me that face, Yelshi, dear”, he replied to his mute complaining, “I was serious back then: what I wanted to say now was just that I had thought you would have fought me and my self-proclaimed authority over you a little more…”, Sara plainly explained and Yelshi only slightly winced in response but stated nothing again.

“Good grief, brother: are you angry at me?”, Sara piled it on and now Yelshi gritted his teeth, but still he didn’t reply.

“…oh, those eyes… I love that expression on your face! You’d _crave_ to answer back to my instigations, but you know you’d better refrain yourself… I love the frustration in your features, brother. It’s _beautiful_.”, Sara commented and that made Yelshi grow even more frustrated and angry.

But he still didn’t move nor said a single word to his infuriating twin.

Then, after a while passed studying Yelshi, Sara muttered, speaking to himself: “Maybe I should give you a reward for the self-control you showed me in repressing your instinct to retort to me…”, and the young Seisakoku’s Emperor lightly sighed in relief before being able to control himself.

“It must have been painful”, Sara went on, sympathizing with his words while that smug grin, instead, never faltered, “I really can’t imagine wearing it even for a single day”, he piled on, allusive, hoping that Yelshi would have finally cracked. “You know: I masturbate at least a couple of times a day… in the bath… on my bed… in front of the mirror, and these last times I just imagine that it’s you touching me and not just my own hand…”, he suggestively evoked and, finally, he succeeded in his intent.

“Please, Sara! Stop it! It’s painful!”, Yelshi begged at last, his eyes teary in growing frustration and need.

But, in front of his show of weakness, Sara’s sadistic smile only grew wider and, without a verbal reply, he only started to slowly and sensually undress in front of his brother.

And Yelshi would have wanted to stop him, or to be the one to strip Sara’s clothes off him, but he also knew that doing this would have accomplished nothing, so he refrained. And he would have liked to divert his eyes from the little show his brother was putting on, but that would have only annoyed Sara, so he endured while his knees were growing more unstable every moment, and his breath got faster and heavier.

Then, when Sara was finally naked in front of him in all his magnificence, he mischievously looked at his repressed brother in the eye.

“Now, you know what you have to do, don’t you?”, Saralegui suggested at last and, slowly and initially slightly reluctant, Yelshi finally walked towards his twin and, kneeling in front of him, he just took him in his mouth and started to prepare him with his fingers.

Not long afterwards, then, Sara finally walked past him and reached the desk in the corner of the parlor without a single word. There he opened the first drawer, took out something from it and then walked back towards his brother with the object concealed behind his back.

…not that Yelshi, knowing him, couldn’t guess the nature of it, anyway…

And Saralegui, lightly brushing his lips over his twin’s neck, behind his ear, at last sneaked what was in his hand into Yelshi’s one. Then he walked away again and put himself in front of the nearest wall, his legs slightly opened, his arms extended in front of him and his hands on the wall.

“Now, take me with that”, he ordered, and Yelshi, this time, cried.

“ _Please_!”, he begged, but Sara turned his face at him and cruelly smirked.

“Maybe, after I come some times more with that perfect surrogate I gave you, I’ll finally remove your cage… but still: we have some time until our departure from here, so my decision will _all_ depend on you and the mood you’ll put me into in the next couple of hours, my dear brother! So…”, he then suggestively made a pause for effect and brightly smiled at him and winked, “do your best to please your master, Yelshi!”

-&-

That evening, surprisingly for everybody except for Yozak, Saralegui asked for dinner in his own quarters and skipped the meeting after that, malingering.

By the way, him being tired didn’t mean that he would have also felt like postponing a little mischief to another day, so, when Ken went back to his own rooms after the short briefing, he found Saralegui waiting for him in his parlor, lazily laying on his loveseat reading one of the books he had collected from Lady Flynn’s library a few days before.

“I thought the reason for your absence at dinner and at the meeting was because you got sick, Your Highness", Murata bitterly commented after a brief moment of shock in finding the Shou Shimaron’s king into his own private quarters definitely _uninvited_.

“I thought you were a better liar, Great Sage.”, Saralegui retorted with a provocative grin while snapping the book in his hand shut. Then he rose from his seat and slowly approached him by the door where Ken was still standing.

“I thought I didn’t need to try: you would have caught the sound of sarcasm in my voice anyway, am I wrong?”

“… _touché_ ” Sara whispered into Ken’s ear, but the sage remained impassive to the advances and ferally smirked back at the blond instead.

“What are you doing here, Your Highness?”, he continued to call him by his title, but he was clearly sardonic with that choice of register there. “Actually I don’t remember allowing you to enter my private quarters at your leisure…”, he hinted, and his tone and eyes were rapidly growing more annoyed every passing minute.

“Obviously killing time while waiting for you, Your Eminence. By the way, you sure can act quite rudely sometimes… You may be the Great Sage of Shin Makoku, but you know: I’m a _king_. You should show a little more respect towards who’s higher in rank than you are, don’t you agree?”, he rhetorically asked and only smiled wider. “And also”, he went on without a pause, “I even graced you with a visit to a lower-ranking’s private quarters for _the_ _second_ time already… won’t you show me a little more gratitude than this for my benevolence?”

“Actually, Your Highness: no one asked you to show any favoritism of the sort towards me…”, Ken pinpointed back, scathingly, but it would have never been a sufficient deterrent for Saralegui, and the double black sadly knew it…

“Still, I’m here specifically to have a chat with you.”, Saralegui replied as if he didn’t notice the sarcasm in the sage’s tone. “By the way, won’t you show me a little more kindness, please?”, he then asked – obviously – _feigning_ some deference despite his status. “After all I’m pretty sure that I already told you that I like you quite a lot, _Murata Ken_.”, and he called him by his name for the first time ever and that, together with Sara’s last declaration, left the sage more than just a little off-balance.

“Never heard of it before now, actually…”, Ken replied then, half bitterly, half uncertain.

“Come on, Sage: you expect me to believe that my kind offer to you and your fiancé wasn’t proof enough of my last statement?”, Saralegui uttered, his tone slightly offended, and Ken’s forehead wrinkled pretty much at that. “Tsu tsu tsu”, the natural blond muttered then, his forefinger shaking in front of Ken’s nose at the same cadence of the harrumphs, while, with the other hand, he crawled his fingertips from his mid-chest up to his bottom lip, “You disappoint me!”

“I thought you had put your eyes on my fiancé…”, Ken suggested then, collecting himself again after just a handful of seconds.

“And you guessed right, Sage, but it’s not the only truth. You know”, the blond king started to explain, “in my position I suffer boredom more than anything else, and I’m surrounded by such inadequate people! But Lord von Bielefeld in a way and you in another piqued my interest. Yuuri too, in truth, but in a slightly different way… he’s just too naïf and gullible for my tastes. He’s no fun after a while…”

“And Wolfram is not?”, Ken retorted, slightly curious now…

“Come on: you know what I mean, and I’m pretty sure that you can understand me better than anybody else. I have a feeling that we are very much alike, _Ken_ … more than both you and I are willing to admit…”

“Yeah… almost too much…”, the sage commented lost in thought, and Saralegui sneered at him in response, not giving it as much thinking as the double black was doing. “By the way”, Murata went on after a brief pause, “as much as everything concerning you actually intrigues me, I am obliged to decline your advances towards me and to deter you from chasing after my fiancé.”, he flatly threatened, but Sara was as easily discouraged from his intents as _he_ was, and that meant _not at all_.

“Please, Sage: don’t say that.”, Saralegui challenged him then, his eyes serious and his smirk feral. “You saw your fiancé’s desire towards me into his eyes the other night. He was _craving_ my body, ready to jump me any minute… he even attempted to break your engagement out of guilt feelings, didn’t he?”

“And how do you know that it was because of you and not because I almost accepted your offer?”, Ken retorted, suddenly on the defensive, but Saralegui only smirked at him.

“He started to avoid _both_ of us the morning after the small chat we had here. Don’t tell me you didn’t notice!”, he provoked him, snickering, and Murata actually felt stupid for not noticing at all, busy as he had been avoiding Wolfram in return for all that time. “He is so pure… _and_ _so_ _sinful_.”, Sara commented then, distracting him from his thoughts, luscious, and Ken looked at him with pensive eyes.

_How could Saralegui’s mind work the exact same way as his own?! How could they be so much alike?_

Ken had lived more than four thousand years, he had known so many people in all his long existence, and still he had _never_ found anyone with whom he shared so many similarities… it was as if their minds were in perfect synchronization, and it was a very strange feeling. A feeling he didn’t like at all, because Saralegui was the only person after Shinou – even if in a different way – whose he felt completely and _dangerously_ vulnerable to. (And actually, Wolfram was the only another one, but, with him, he didn’t feel that sense of _danger_ that king Saralegui and Shinou inspired in him.)

But, despite all of his rationality was shouting at him not to comply with the young man standing in front of him, alluringly in all his carnal sensuality, something in the back of Ken’s mind told him that he had nothing to fear from him. And it made no sense at all, because Saralegui was maybe the most dangerous man he had ever met in all his long life… even more dangerous than _he_ was, because he seemed to lack a conscience sometimes!

“I see the doubt in your eyes, Sage…”, Sara commented, distracting Murata from his train of thought after a while passed in silence studying each other’s reactions. “But I can tell just looking at you that what is troubling you doesn’t concern your lover but more _yourself_ …”, he went on, digging deeper into the meanders of the other’s mind. “My question is: _why_?”

To that, Ken remained silent: a myriad of thoughts was crowding his head and nothing made sense.

If it wasn’t for his pride, the double black would have asked him how was it even possible for him to read him so easily. He wasn’t easy to read! He had never been, and it was what had saved him so many times during his many reincarnations. So, how was it possible?

Another doubt, then, crossed his mind: he was a half Shinzoku like Shinou, so he could manipulate minds… but, even if it was true, manipulation didn’t mean mind-reading.

So he decided to test him…

“Before answering your question, would you kindly answer to a couple of mine, first, please?”, Ken replied and Saralegui tilted his head to the side, intrigued.

“Why not”, he conceded and gave him a half smile while going back to the loveseat of before to wait, and Ken followed him there and took a seat on the armchair in front of it on the other side of the small tea table.

“Then, my first question is”, the sage started at last “why Wolfram and not Yuuri? You already said that Shibuya is too naïf, but actually Wolfram can be even more simple-minded than he is at times, and I’m sure you know it.”

Sara seemed to attentively ponder the question before replying.

“You are certainly right, and the double personality of the Maoh is more than a little intriguing. And not to mention the enormous power he has! But, actually, there is something of Lord von Bielefeld that attracts me to him more than Yuuri does, and I convene that, knowing me, it’s at least slightly peculiar. By the way, I actually enjoy Lord von Bielefeld’s flustered face and his rebellious temper more than anything else in the world, especially when _I’m_ the one inducing that state in him… Not even playing with my brother turns me on this much, actually…”, Sara concluded and Ken decided to ignore his last sentence, not sure if he really wanted to investigate that last topic any further, and thought about Sara’s first answer for quite a long time while Saralegui just waited patiently for the next question, growing more curious every minute spent there studying each other in silence.

“Question number two”, Ken finally broke the silence fallen upon them, serious, “why didn’t you make a single move on him in the last six days and you decided to move _now_ that things between Wolfram and I are going back to normal instead?”, he inquired and Saralegui sneered at him and rose back again from his seat to approach him and then he made something that Murata actually didn’t expect: he sat in his lap, his legs crossed, an arm around Ken’s shoulders and, with his other hand, Sara started to draw light circles with his fingertips over the other’s chest.

“It’s more fun this way”, he whispered in his ear with a sultry voice and then he licked and sucked the sage’s earlobe, but Ken just maintained his cool, and, in truth, neither him knew how he had been able to do it in the end. “And actually I’ve been thinking about it in the last few days, and I decided that I want you both. The game is more than worth the candle, _Ken_.” And, at his name, Murata finally reacted like _any other person_ would have done already by then.

The Sage needed almost a couple of minutes then to collect himself again, and when he finally did, he grabbed Saralegui’s roaming hand hard in his, removing it from his body by force.

“As much as your offer is alluring and I might undoubtedly enjoy tasting your body in so many different ways that you have no idea”, he started slightly panting by then, “I don’t want to risk again my relationship with my fiancé, which sadly is still slightly precarious.”, he confessed. “I’m sorry, _Saralegui_ ”, he called him by his name only, at last, “and you actually can’t understand _how much_ I am, because I find you very hard to resist to, but I must warn you: try anything funny like that on Wolfram and I promise you that you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”, he threatened, but Saralegui only took Murata’s earlobe in his mouth again, lightly and sensually sucking on it, tempting.

“Come on, Ken: am I really asking you too much when the both of you actually desire me and I desire you both?”, he asked him in a pout that maybe – and just maybe – wasn’t feigned. “Our desire is well shared, isn’t it? So why denying it in the first place?”

“I already told you: I won’t risk my relationship with Wolfram on a whim.”, his ratiocination replied when his guts still told him to just allow that and – after Saralegui’s answers – when he felt that he had to say ‘yes’ to him now even more than before he had started that little ‘investigation’…

But, surprisingly, a very much red in the face Wolfram entered Murata’s parlor in that same precise instant.

“I am in favor of it.”, the blond new intruder panted in an unsteady but resolved voice, his eyes fixed on a generic spot on the floor, and he was far too embarrassed to cross either of the other two’s gazes, taken aback by the position in which he found the two of them.

A stunned “what?” left Ken’s throat at that totally unexpected declaration on something Wolfram wasn’t even supposed to have listened to, and the blond’s face reddened even more than it was a moment before.

“I’m sorry, Ken…”, he started again, now slightly more uncertain, “…I know I shouldn’t even think that, but the desire I feel for him is actually as overwhelming as the one I feel for you…”, he confessed, mortified but unable to lie, as it wasn't in his nature, “and _I know_ it’s shameful”, he continued, “and I really don’t know what’s gotten into me to arrive to say something like that, so if you might decide that I don’t deserve your love and you want to call off the engagement in the end I’ll humbly accept your decision, but our feelings are actually _mutual_!”, he tried to convince Ken and, maybe even more, _himself_ , “…and you even said that you’d gladly accept his advances if it wasn’t for me… but I’m actually in favor of it…”, he concluded at last, his voice trembling in the end, and, the more he went on with his argumentation, the more he grew insecure with the growing fear of losing Ken again in such a short time, and this time for good.

Sara, at this point, turned towards the double black and looked at Ken smugly, waiting for a reply from him.

A long, tense silence then followed but, at last, Ken slightly nodded just once in agreement.

“Then tomorrow night…”, Sara confirmed, and, at that, the blond king raised from the Sage’s lap where he still was sat and, grinning at the both of them, he approached Wolfram by the door and, before leaving, he lightly kissed him on the lips murmuring a “thank you” barely audible even to the mazoku.

 

When the door suddenly closed behind Sara’s back, leaving the two fiancés finally alone, Wolfram fixed his eyes on the floor, deeply mortified under his lover’s contemplative gaze.

“I’m sorry…”, Wolfram murmured then after another long and tense silence, his arms along his body and his fists clenched. But Ken, at that, just walked towards him and hugged him firmly in his arms. Then he kissed him on his left cheek.

“Thank you, Wolfram.”, he only replied in a tone without inflexions, and the blond glared at his lover, wild-eyed.

“Are you mocking me, by any chance?”, he asked, suddenly angry, but he actually hesitated a moment in front of Ken’s surprise drawn on his face. Not enough to calm himself, but surely enough to decide to clarify his previous caustic question. “What does that mean?!”, he continued, more than just a little outraged in truth, “I desire a man other than you, _as much_ as I desire _you_ who are my fiancé and so much that I can’t even sleep at night, and you, who actually _punished_ me for just a _frown_ towards Yuuri and Lady Flynn, say ‘thank you, Wolfram’ to me?! Are you fucking kidding me?”, he panted, irritated and confused and, in front of the way his fiancé put it, Ken could do nothing if not sneering.

“… you’re right, my love”, Murata convened, but then sobered up shortly after that. “And I know that, put it like that, it may sound bad, but I can’t explain it myself either: where I burn in jealousy for everything concerning you and Shibuya, for some reason I’m _not_ jealous of Saralegui, even if you tell me that you desire his body as much as you desire mine and you didn’t feel anything of the sort for Shibuya instead.”, he explained. “So”, he went on, serious, “if you tell me that you want to go for it with him, bad as it may sound, I’m just glad… even if we might decide, after tomorrow night, to make of it something more than a one-night stand only.”

After that utter declaration, the two of them looked into each other’s eyes for a small eternity in silence, until Wolfram snapped a frustrated “That’s king Saralegui for you, damn!” while burying his face into his lover’s shoulder and finding himself enclosed in a strong embrace in return.

“Yeah… quite infuriating, isn’t he?”, Ken sighed back, resigned, and then, taking his fiancé’s chin between his thumb and forefinger, he sloppily kissed Wolfram on the lips while his other hand, soon followed by the first one too, started to roam around in search for clothes to take off that perfect body of his.


	9. You better not know...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this is short... maybe the shortest chapter I ever wrote, but I started to like writing scenes with Conrad and Yozak now that Conrad has stopped to be an asshole... XD  
> Actually, this micro-scene wasn't planned (if it were, I would have posted it at the end of the previous chapter, actually)... so see it as a small omake XD
> 
> Meanwhile I'm going to take the chance to tell you that next chapter will be Yelshi-centered, but I fear you'll have to wait a couple of weeks for it 'cause the day after tomorrow I'm leaving for a week for Helsinki to go see my sister before she comes back from her erasmus... but I already planned the next two chapters, so don't you fear: it won't pass too long before I will post them too ;)

Conrad was in his husband’s bedroom with him and they were changing for the night when he saw the redhead abruptly stop midway, his shirt still half on. He watched at him perplexed, but he knew that expression: he was listening to something only his ears could catch.

Still, he could also recognize _horror_ on his face for whatever he was eavesdropping.

He suppressed the impulse to ask him what was going on and tried to concentrate over something else for the time being in order not to distract him, sensing that it was better to wait and finally know what was happening that provoked such a reaction in his usually imperturbable husband instead of asking him now and maybe let him lose some important detail in the meanwhile. So he finished to change as quietly as possible and then put himself under the covers, where he waited for him for a while.

“Oh great Shinou…”, Conrad heard Yozak suddenly curse in little more than a whisper, breaking the silence fallen in the room. Then the redhead softly sneered in shock and the brunet decided that maybe now was the right moment to ask his husband what was going on. But the spy only shook his head in response and finally finished to disrobe and, once naked, he crawled in bed next to Conrad.

“So?”, the brunet insisted then, curious, but Yozak seemed still too stunned by what he had overheard to share the ‘news’ with him, and it wasn’t a reaction that Conrad had seen often in his husband, and that obviously made him only grow more interested. “Come on, Yozak! Tell me too!”

“It’s nothing important, Conrad” was the elusive answer the redhead gave him while he also tried to distract him from the topic with a curious hand around the brunet’s nether regions under the covers and a few light kisses on the neck behind his ear. And Conrad’s body promptly responded to his husband’s ministrations, but he resisted and, against his inner instinct, he grabbed Yozak’s hand that was expertly working on his hardening shaft and removed it from there.

“Stop your attempts to distract me and tell me what happened _now_ , Yozak.”, he persisted slightly irritated maybe more for having had to stop him than for anything else, and the redheaded spy sighed resigned.

“Believe me, Conrad: you really, _really_ better not know this time…”, he hinted, but once he could still accept such a reply; not twice.

“I won’t accept it as an explanation this time, Yozak”, Conrad protested at last, “and I don’t want to be left in the dark about what’s happening to my brother.”

“I see your hunch is still working well, my husband, but what would you say if anyone pried into your sexual life? I don’t think we should meddle in this, Conrad, and this time in particular is one of those times when I curse my gift the most.”

“Still, I want to know too.”, Conrad insisted again, but Yozak shook his head more firmly this time.

“I’m sure your brother would react pretty bad if he discovered that you pried into his private affairs.”, he replied, and that made the brunet hesitate for a moment, but then he went on, stubborn.

“Yet, you know and I don’t. It’s not right.”, he retorted, but it sounded quite childish for a man of that age, and he might have realized it because he didn’t finish to say it that he slightly flushed and diverted his eyes from his husband’s.

A heavy silence fell upon them then, but Yozak finally broke it, serious, watching at Conrad in the eye while talking, his fingers firmly clenched around his chin.

“I’ll tell you this: Wolfram decided _on his own accord_ ”, he remarked, “to embark on that where the Sage had already _refused_ Saralegui’s ‘offer’ – let’s call it that.”, he stated while watching Conrad turn pale at his words. “And I won’t say anymore about this. So”, he concluded, “you better not put your nose into your brother’s affairs if you don’t want to ruin your relationship with him more than you already did these last few years, and believe me: I’m saying that only for your sake this time.”, he declared in a dead serious tone and, finally, Conrad resigned to accept his husband’s arguments and hungrily kissed Yozak in response until they had to separate for air.

“Then, the least you can do now, my irritating husband”, Conrad uttered at last, slightly panting, “is distract me from any unnecessary thought…”, he suggested and, to that, Yozak mischievously grinned at him and switched off the lights in the room.

“I actually know a few ways to grant your wish, my love…”, he hinted and then he crawled under the linens and started to lick his husband’s hardening manhood while slowly and knowingly preparing him with his fingers for the last act meant to definitely make him forget anything that wasn’t pleasure-related.


	10. News

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seriously, I don't know why every time I plan to write something, something else has to come out, making me postpone what I had previously in mind! So, Yelshi's jealousy will have to wait showing up a little longer... sorry...  
> I promise that I won't ever say again what'll be in the next chapter, and you can definitely come here and hit me on the head if I do it again... Gomen!
> 
> By the way, it seems that this third part of the story will be definitely divised in quite short - at least for my standards -chapters (and it's something new for me...)  
> Despite that, I hope you'll enjoy the releases, and the story, obviously! :)

“Did you find your rooms to your liking, Yelshi Heika?”, Lady Flynn asked the young half-Shinzoku emperor once everybody got in the dining room for breakfast at nine in the morning, “You know, I made all the arrangements following King Saralegui’s advices. He was very concerned about you and your arrival and he had asked me to do everything in my power to ensure that your stay here would be as comfortable as possible. He sure loves you very much.”, she added in a kind tone, even if attempting to forget about the impression she had the previous afternoon at Yelshi’s arrival.

At this last remark, then, the young man threw a quick glance at his now broadly smiling brother and, imitating him, all the others there did the same as him, Flynn included.

“Isn’t it obvious that I love him?”, Saralegui retorted to the small covey feigning offense for the skeptical glances he received, but then he smiled back again while, on the other hand, Yelshi’s smile of when he had entered in the room slowly vanished from his lips only to appear again after a brief moment, plastered-on as if it had been drawn on a slice of paper and then stuck on his face with glue.

“Yes, I did, Madam. Thank you for your concern. It was very kind of you.”, he replied maybe a bit too formally and impersonally, and the topic would have died as it had began if only Saralegui hadn’t intruded in the conversation once again, deliberately embarrassing Yelshi with his next words.

“My dear little brother!”, he exclaimed in fact, puckered, “Why are you so cold towards our so very kind hostess?”, he rebuked him pretty harshly, “You sure can be quite anti-social at times! But we are among friends, are we not?”, he commented at last and Yelshi swallowed hard but didn’t reply, taken aback by the totally unexpected reprimand coming from his twin. But then Yuuri intervened at his rescue, lecturing Saralegui back.

“You shouldn’t be so harsh toward your brother, Sara!”, he stated, abruptly rising from his seat and startling Yelshi more than his twin’s words actually did. “He did nothing wrong! He’s just slightly shy, that’s all, and you, as his brother, should know better. So, please, stop embarrassing him in front of us: he doesn’t deserve it.”, Yuuri uttered, but those words only made the atmosphere gloomier and heavier in the silence that followed, so the Sage stepped in too in order to solve the situation and lighten up the air in the room.

“You sure have a point here, Shibuya, but please, now: sit down again and let’s all eat. I’m certain that it wasn’t Saralegui’s intent to be unkind towards His Highness Yelshi and that everything was just a misunderstanding. _Am I right,_ _Saralegui_?”, he threatened the blond king of Shou Shimaron in a very persuasive even if smooth tone, but what he didn’t notice – at least right away – and what _all the others_ actually _did_ notice instead was the peculiar lack of honorifics when he referred to Sara: clearly a slip of the tongue, but it was enough to catch the attention of everybody who was sat there and to make the Sage realize his mistake a moment too late to correct himself without seeming even more suspicious. So he just smiled to divert attention from his lapse and waited for Saralegui’s reply to cover up for his utter mistake, knowing in his gut that he would have done that, but the too naïf Wolfram royally ruined everything, accomplishing exactly the opposite instead.

“Your Highness Yelshi!”, the blond demon exclaimed in fact, jumping on his feet and brightly red in the face without a clear reason for who didn’t know of the last arrangements between the three of them. “What my fiancé the Great Sage wanted to say is that _His Highness_ Saralegui certainly didn’t mean anything bad towards your royal self and definitely misunderstood your intentions, because it’s clear that you only wanted to be kind and respectful to Lady Flynn, before! Isn’t it?”, he asked and then he turned towards Ken in search for his support, but he only received a silent reproach by his lover’s black eyes and a forced smile plastered on his face, while, among many doubtful frowns, Saralegui concealed a soft laugh behind his hand instead that left Yelshi quite unsettled.

“Yes, brother. I’m sorry.”, he finally spoke then, his voice still hiding a veil of amusement in it that everybody noticed but no one pointed out. “I meant no harm to you with my previous words! I just wanted you to feel more at ease given that, as I already said, we are among friends here.”, Sara concluded in a very much reasonable tone with a wide smile painted on his face, but Yelshi only darkened instead and, in the end, he just finished his meal without another word. Then, with a single nod, he took his leave and retired to his own assigned quarters until the meeting time in an hour and a half, locking inside so that Sara couldn’t intrude on him without his consent as he, in fact, attempted once back from breakfast too, less than a quarter of hour after he had come back.

-&-

Lady Flynn was in her office since after breakfast working while waiting for the meeting for the day to start when her butler knocked at the door with the mail arrived that morning.

“May I come in?”, asked the old man and the woman only nodded at him and then thanked him when he handed the silver tray out.

“There’s one for the Maoh. I put it at the top of the pile. Do you want me to bring it to him?”, he asked the lady, but she shook her head and gently dismissed him with a smile.

“No, thank you. I’ll do it.”, she replied and then she left the office less than a minute after her servant, leaving the rest of the letters for later.

She was walking through the hallways to Yuuri’s quarters then when she bumped into him at a corner and she would have fallen if it wasn’t for Yuuri who promptly caught her by her elbow.

“Sorry!”, they cried with one voice and, when they saw who they collided with, both of them slightly blushed but, at Yuuri’s words which followed, Flynn definitely turned bright red in the face in the end.

“I was just thinking about you and here you are”, he declared in fact, a little embarrassed too, while scratching the back of his head like every time that he was uncomfortable about something.

“I… I was looking for you too, actually…”, she stuttered, still flushed, and when she noticed that her own words could be easily misunderstood – and actually had been – she soon added, still without meeting his eyes: “I have a letter for you from your castle… I came to give it to you as soon as I received it. It might be important…”

At the clarification, Yuuri laughed quite awkwardly for the misunderstanding and he scratched his head once again while avoiding her eyes too. Then, just peeking at her, he extended his hand to her to receive said letter, and he was too embarrassed for having made a fool of himself to think of the contents of it for a while. So he watched at the envelope for almost a minute with blank eyes until he put all his efforts to funnel his attention on that and not on the woman who gave it to him.

“Oh!”, he suddenly exclaimed, a little surprised since he almost forgot about that matter. “It’s from Gisela!”, he stated. Then he read the brief content of the sheet of paper in his hands and explained: “She’s joining us too. It seems that she’ll be here in a few days. Judging by the date on the letter, she left the castle two days ago, so she’ll shortly be one of us too!”

“…then… why didn’t she leave with you?”, Flynn suddenly asked out of curiosity, and, at the due question, Yuuri slightly darkened.

“Something happened and I asked her to join us.”, he replied vaguely. “By the way, everything is settled, now, but having some other help will surely come on hand, don’t you think so too?”, he responded diverting her attention with asking the woman her opinion about it, a trick than not always worked but that he had actually mastered, day after day, to deal with Gunter and Wolfram over the years.

Then Flynn, knowing better than asking further about it, just nodded and let the topic naturally drop.

“Then let’s go to my office”, she replied instead. “The meeting will start soon, so you’ll be able to deliver the news to everybody there.”, and so they walked back together and, while waiting for the others to join them, she finished to check the mail and, abruptly, she paled and cursed in her head to not have checked the rest of it beforehand.

“What?”, Yuuri asked, baffled by the sudden change in her features, and she watched at him without seeing him for a brief moment before answering, as if she had needed that time to register the question.

“Belar IV…”, she muttered in a feeble voice, and Murata and Wolfram, followed not far back by Conrad and Yozak, chose _that_ moment to open the door to the room and enter, when she added a grave: “He’s dead.”

“ _Shit!_ ”, Ken cursed before everybody else could speak and punched the frame of the door hiding his gaze behind the glow of his lenses. “Weeks of planning for nothing!”.

Then Saralegui and Yelshi arrived too and the news put a pretty gloomy mood over the small covey there, that got only worsened by Saralegui’s lack of tact and sharp tongue.

“It seems that your plan must be revised from the start… you’ll have to find someone else to put on Dai Shimaron’s throne…”, the Shou Shimaron’s king commented with a smirk plastered on his face and Ken glared at him like everybody else in the room but then decided to just ignore him.

“How?”, the Sage asked, caustic, now addressing Lady Flynn.

“He was publicly executed for treason as a remainder for the people”, she explained and Ken, this time, remained silent, lost in thought and attempting to think fast for a solution to that troublesome hitch that messed up their plans, but the news brought a havoc among all others there and it lasted for a few minutes until the sage stepped in, silencing them all.

“People”, he stated, his tone solemn and quite annoyed, “the meeting – as much as everything else”, Ken added in a lower but not less resolved voice, throwing a quick glance at Wolfram and then an even quicker one at Saralegui, “will be postponed until I figure something out and decide a new plan of action.”, but Yuuri intervened before his friend could turn toward the door and retire to his own quarters to think in peace and silence without any loud distractions around him.

“Why can’t we think of a solution all together here and now? Isn’t it better if more minds work on it together rather than you just rack your brain over this all alone? We’re a team, Murata! Maybe I’m not good at planning things, but everybody else here actually is!”, the Maoh protested, but then, surprisingly, Saralegui was the one who replied to that remark.

“We will definitely discuss it together, but to have some time to adjust to the news might not be a bad idea.”, he commented and, after the pretty unmindful and irritating remark that came out of his foul mouth only a few minutes before, everybody turned at him, almost shocked. “So, what about postponing the meeting to after lunch… let’s say, at two in the afternoon?”, he suggested, and, even if the glances at him didn’t stop at his more than reasonable suggestion, most of them nodded and prepared to leave.

The only two who still weren’t convinced after his remark – even if for quite different reasons – were Yuuri and Yelshi, and they reacted in pretty opposite ways: where the Seisakoku’s Emperor actually was the first one to leave the room, in fact, the Maoh stood still where he was for a while even after everyone but Lady Flynn had already retired to their own quarters.

In the end, when they were alone in her office, the woman raised from her seat and reached Yuuri, stopping next to him, their hands slightly brushing against each other.

“Don’t take it at heart… it’s really better this way. Like this, in fact, we won’t waste time thinking about it while our minds are still shaken by the news, and we will consult, instead, once we all would have had the time and peace of mind to find an idea to overcome that sad inconvenience.”, she explained in a soft tone, gently smiling at him and, in a way, appeasing his mounting rage that, without him really knowing how or why – even if he actually had a few hints about the possible reasons behind it – was overwhelming him in the last few days (or maybe weeks) whenever Murata was concerned.


	11. Change of Plans...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another short chapter (just a scene in truth...) because I felt like writing it XD  
> Enjoy ;)

Wolfram had left Ken alone in his quarters right after the – cut-short – meeting, more or less an hour earlier.

Now it was lunch time and, knowing the sage, the blond demon was sure he didn’t notice: that’s why now he was standing in front of his door, to tell the truth, a slightly bit unsure if it was the case to remind him of that or not. After all, _he_ had lost his appetite because of all that mess, so he could only guess for his fiancé to feel even _worse_ than him about it…

However, despite that, in the end he decided that it was better for Ken to eat something before the next meeting. So he lightly knocked and, as usual, he didn’t wait for him to answer back and peeped inside.

“May I?”, he asked, slightly abashed for his intruding on him while he was busy, but he had decided that lunch was more important, and he wasn’t one to step back on his decisions, even if they were just in his mind.

So he stepped in, but actually didn’t leave the door, and, the more he watched at his dispirited lover up there, curved over the map on his desk and lost in thought, his eyes blank, the more he was changing his mind about lunch, actually, and the more he was thinking, instead, to an ‘alternative plan’ in order to lighten his mood at least a little…

And Murata was going to ask him why he didn’t approach him, that, just before being able to open his mouth to speak, he found his fiancé towering over him and, only a fleeting instant after that, Wolfram’s lips over his own and his tongue not asking but _pretending_ to enter.

Like that, in that totally uncomfortable position, they made out until both of them ran out of breath. Then, still dazzled by the unexpected and, maybe, even slightly inappropriate initiative of his lover – at least for the moment – Ken gave him an inquisitive gaze but remained silent, waiting for Wolfram to explain his behavior.

Not that he didn’t like it – quite the contrary! – but it didn’t seem quite the most proper thing to do for instant…

And in front of those black staring orbs which pierced through him in search for _something_ , Wolfram felt suddenly ashamed and, growing red in the face, he abruptly turned his back at his lover in order to hide his raising embarrassment.

“It’s lunch time!”, he declared instead, feigning his usual annoyance, attitude that had actually softened pretty much since they shared a bed for the first time, but that quite never disappeared – _luckily_ , Ken could do nothing but be thankful that it was the case.

But the mere fact that Wolfram didn’t turn at him for complaining in his face would have been proof enough of his mortification even for a dimwit like Yuuri, having him been in his place, actually…

Then, growing more embarrassed every passing second, Wolfram decided to just leave – _not_ to run away, obviously! He was a soldier: he didn’t run – but Ken called him back before his hand could reach the handle.

“Wait: you didn’t answer”, he flatly stated and, to that, Wolfram finally turned back to look at him and, crossing his arms over his chest and giving him a defiant glare, he bitterly replied.

“Actually, you never voiced anything until now since I entered your quarters.”, he pointed out feigning an attitude in hope that it would have been enough to change the topic and avert his lover’s attention from him and his embarrassment of the moment.

“Don’t play dumb, Wolfram”, Ken retorted right back, but his tone was actually _sultry_ and a wicked smirk was drawn on his face, having him recognized right away his lover’s futile attempt to distract him. “Also”, he went on, slightly amused by the vain effort, “you should know that you need more than such a weak shot at me to discourage my curiosity… and _that_ kiss, on its behalf, certainly aroused it quite a lot instead, you know?”

Then he rose from his chair and, _very_ slowly, he joined Wolfram by the door while lightly chuckling at his fiancé’s attempt to avoid his gaze and, when he got at no more than a palm from him, he firmly took his chin between his thumb and forefinger and forced him to watch at him in the eye.

“So?”, he inquired again, “what was that for?”, but Wolfram hit his hand away and took a step back, ready to go for the handle and finally leave.

“You sure are persistent!”, he readily complained then, at a total loss for resources to win that argument – as it always happened with the sage, in truth, but a part of him hated to admit it even to himself…

“ _Tsundere_ …”, Ken whispered in reply to his whining, lightly chortling, amused and, in truth, quite grateful for that small and unexpected diversion.

To that Wolfram finally snapped.

“And _please_ : _stop_ referring to me with such inappropriate terms!”, he hissed, feeling insulted, but Ken was enjoying their little game – and both of them knew that it was it – and he was obviously enjoying having the upper hand on him as always.

“The only one acting inappropriately here, actually, is _you_ , my love…”, he retorted, provoking, and the previous smirk was still drawn on his face, and his tone was far too ostentatiously _teasing_. Something that actually made Wolfram grow even angrier and uneasy than he already was… together with something else that was not-so-slowly pervading his body and soul and having the better over his resolve to continue arguing.

“You should know that you can’t win against me”, Ken piled on, then, recognizing the signs of the surrender in his fiancé’s attitude at last.

Then he teasingly licked and nibbled at his fiancé’s lower lip while he was chewing on it.

“Did our duel in the arena teach you nothing, my beautiful lion?”, he asked in the end, alluring and irresistible against his mouth and, to that, Wolfram’s breath grew definitely rough and heavy against Ken’s lips and, in the end, the blond mazoku could do nothing but succumb to the instinct and need to mate, as if he was no more than just a mere beast in a cage.

And he loved so much that feeling of being overpowered by him – him and no one else, not even Yuuri, even if he actually was more powerful than his actual fiancé; and not even Saralegui now that he had come into picture too…

_Only Ken._

He closed his eyes shut when Ken’s teeth sank into the flesh of his neck, wantonly, and a deep groan freed from his throat.

Playing the part of the fox in that chase excited him to no limit, maybe even too much for his own good, and now that Ken had caught him again after their last – pretty big – quarrel that was all his own fault, now that he had forced him in a corner without a way out, all he wanted was his _tamer_.

And he wanted him _not_ in a pure and chaste way…

“ _I hate you!_ ”, he moaned in his lover’s ear at last and, finally, he abandoned himself to him, his actions utterly contradicting his words, and he literally threw his arms around his neck, searching for his lips again and claiming for them as if they should be a compensation for all the grievances he always gave him, but never forgetting in his mind how much losing to him actually overheated him to the core.

Not that he would have admitted it out loud to him, anyway… and not that Ken actually needed him to tell him…


	12. Jealousy

“Hey, Murata!”, Yuuri knocked but, like everybody else, he didn’t wait for a reply before entering. “I’m sorry for before, really. By the way, stop racking your brain over this for a while and let’s go downstairs. It’s time for lun-----”

The last word died in his throat at the scene unwinding in front of his eyes.

He swallowed hard and he stopped breathing, his eyes wide open in pure awe, and in that very moment he realized that, a Wolfram in _that_ position, standing by the wall with his arms thrown at Murata’s neck for balance, wearing nothing but his bare skin and a thin layer of sweat that covered his magnificently defined muscles that made him seem like a perfect reproduction of a Renaissance sculpture in that almost unnatural pose he was in, with his back high-arched behind in an impossible as much as erotic angle, one leg up, sustained by Murata’s arm that was bended like his other one so that he could easily reach his lover’s round and full bottom and sink his fingers in that smooth velvet that was his skin – because he knew oh-too-well the feeling of Wolf’s skin under his hands and fingers for all the times he had to remove the blond from over his body _every morning for six long years_! – …and his head, thrown behind in total abandon, his neck curved in another improbable angle and his heavy-lidded eyes clearly blind to _everything_ around him while he seemed lost in a world of pure ecstasy where nothing that it wasn’t pleasure could exist, and that mouth, slightly opened with a thin line of drool at a corner of his full and peculiarly bright red lips when even his usually pale cheeks were tinged in a shade of pink he had _never_ seen coloring his face before then, would have haunted him _for_ _a very long time_ in his dreams and not, and every time he would have even only _glanced_ at him, let alone crossed his gaze or attempted to speak to him.

“You really, _really_ should lock the door when you decide to make out, you know?!”, Yuuri complained in an inexplicable angry tone while shutting the door close back again even if, in the back of his mind, he knew that it was all his fault and his fault alone for entering without waiting for a feedback coming from inside.

And actually, even if on the ship the wall separating his cabin from those two’s one was too thin for _everybody’s_ good and he far-too-often overheard them while they were making _sex_ , seeing it happening right in front of his still virgin eyes – seeing the total abandon and the ecstasy, even for such a short moment, on Wolfram’s face – actually made some switch click in his head in what he knew in his guts that was a totally, utterly _wrong_ way.

The truth was that he had figured out that, in those two’s relationship, Wolfram was the _neko_ , but knowing that with him, _for years_ , he had insisted that _he_ had to abandon himself to his care, that _he_ should have been the one being embraced, made him furious for some reason. And now, watching at whom he had always seen as his best friend and at who had always proclaimed himself a top being _fiercely_ _ravished_ by Murata and actually _enjoying_ it – and to _that_ extent, nonetheless! – made him want to jump at Ken’s throat seeking revenge for his wounded man’s pride.

And it made no sense at all – he knew it! – because he had actually never liked Wolfram in that fashion and because _said_ Wolfram seemed to be pretty happy about that and to even enjoy it to the fullest…

And _he_ _wanted_ Wolfram to be happy, really!

But still: then why was he resenting Murata so much? He was making Wolfram happy, after all…

He was succeeding where he had failed, actually…

Maybe it was that…

So he heaved a very long and anguished sigh and he repeated to himself that he was being silly and acting jealous over the _wrong_ points only because he missed Wolfram by his side _as a friend_ and because he blamed Murata for snatching him away the moment he had turned his gaze from him for just a fleeting instant, and when he had done it only out of consideration for the feelings the blond had for him…

He had only wanted to be kind and considerate, in the end, and now Murata seemed to have locked Wolfram in a cage where he couldn’t reach him, no matter how much he struggled or complained about wanting to be at his side. No matter how much he cared about being part of his life.

“Damn those two”, he cursed in a low voice, and he had _never_ been one to curse for a start, so that mere fact was proof enough that it was time for him to act and finally solve that problem – because it was _indeed_ a problem! – and definitely eradicate it from its roots once and for all. Because, Wolfram could now be Murata’s fiancé, but that wasn’t a good enough reason in itself for Murata to decide, totally a priori, to _exclude_ him like that from their lives: Wolfram was _his_ _best friend_ , after all, and he had _no right_ to negate him his place by his side only out of jealousy and possessiveness! _And for no reason at all!!_

While thinking that, then, Yuuri finally reached the dining room where everybody else had already gathered together and was waiting for him – and those other two…

By the way, he only stood by the threshold, grave and with clear annoyance distorting his usually kind features. But actually, enough was enough, even for a patient man like him: it was time for the three of them to have a _very_ _long_ chat about all that and to put an end to that foolish and stressful rant… _soon_ …

“The meeting is postponed to tomorrow: I have more urgent matters to take care of today.”, Yuuri declared from there in an uncharacteristic cold tone, leaving everybody slightly perplexed. “Also: the moment you see Murata and Wolfram, tell them that I have to talk to them _posthaste_ ”, he remarked, “and that I’ll wait for them in my quarters.”

That said, then, he turned his heels at the table and retired, leaving the rest of them there in utter confusion, even if almost all had at least a slight idea of what might have happened to stir such a _bad_ reaction in Yuuri…

Then, when the Maoh was out of sight at last, a voiced raised over the bewildered silence that had fallen after the double black’s outburst.

“Then”, Saralegui started while rising from his seat with a quite wicked smile curving up the edges of his thin lips, “I think I’ll go report the Maoh’s words to them… if you’ll excuse me.”, he stated and then left too before anyone actually had the time to speak their mind about him going to see those two when even the Maoh had ‘retreated’.

-&-

“Well well well”, Sara suddenly intruded into the sage’s rooms without even taking the trouble of knocking and found the two of them on the loveseat, Wolfram huddled up over himself, his hands covering his face, and Ken silently trying to cheer him up while drawing circles on his back with his hand. “What’s that gloomy mood inside here?” he asked with a smirk almost splitting his face in half and in a pretty amused tone.

“Actually, it isn’t a good moment”, Ken replied without deigning the intruder of a single glance but in a quite soft tone – or at least softer than the one Saralegui was used to coming from him. “So, can you please come back later? I’m quite sure that, whatever it is, it can wait…”, he suggested growing more caustic every passing moment but – and actually Murata expected nothing less than this from him, sadly – despite his cold words the half-blooded king played deaf and reached them there on the small sofa instead, sitting on the armrest on the other side of Wolfram.

“Go away, Sara. You’re the last person I need to see now.”, the blond demon uttered at his move, menacing, but Saralegui only chuckled at that.

“I thought that the last one would have been _your Maoh_ , actually…”, he commented allusive and _that_ definitely gained the other two’s full attention.

“WHAT?!”, Wolfram gasped, starting panicking before he could do anything to control his emotions.

“He came down and literally ordered us to refer to you that he will wait for you two in his private chambers as soon as possible.”, the blond king replied in an even voice, but he seemed unable to erase that irritating smirk from his features.

And those words, actually, had the power to make Wolfram groan in desperation and curl up in a ball, and to make Murata sigh in a mixture of annoyance, frustration and resignation.

“Us both…”, the sage finally pondered to himself in a soft whisper breaking the few minutes long silence that had fallen and that, surprisingly, Saralegui allowed. And it wasn’t a question, actually, but the young king felt the urge to reply anyway, adding a sneer to the nod totally _for free_ …

“It’s not funny, so stop laughing!”, Wolfram snapped at last, but the more he complained and struggled, the more Sara enjoyed it, and that was exactly why Murata had said nothing to him since Yuuri had become part of their topic.

And actually… to tell the whole truth, in his place he would have enjoyed it quite a lot too……

“You are _so_ wrong about it, _Wolfram_.”, Sara promptly answered back at him in a purr and, despite the situation, Wolfram had actually a shiver run along his spine at his own name called in such a sultry tone. “I’m actually enjoying my time here watching at your horrified expressions since the moment I named Yuuri…”

“How dare you laugh in our face?!”, Wolfram protested in a loud tone, desperately looking for a diversion, and a fight was the only thing he could think of at the moment, but Ken gripped his shoulder and squeezed in a silent attempt to make him calm down.

“…so I deduce that he saw you in a pretty _intimate_ moment…”, Sara piled on in response to the blond’s last complaints, totally ignoring them, and snickered at his face, that abruptly reddened in embarrassment and shame. “A real pity that it wasn’t me…”, he went on in a feigned pout, but he really thought it, actually… “I would have gladly joined you there had it been the case…”

“And we wouldn’t have found ourselves in such a thorny situation…”, the sage suddenly added in a bitter tone, as if talking to himself, and the comment made Sara smile even more mischievously than a moment earlier, and Wolfram turn even redder and more mortified.

“Indeed… a real pity…”, he confirmed the blond king and, lightly and peculiarly fondly caressing Wolfram’s cheek with the palm of his hand, he finally stood up again, ready to leave them.

When he reached the door, by the way, he opened it and then stopped with the handle still in his hand, turning just his head toward them.

“After your ‘chat’ with your Maoh”, he added in a casual but allusive tone, “if you think you’ll need a distraction given that I suppose you’ll feel slightly uneasy toward one another by then, I’ll gladly show you my sympathy and be of some help…” he suggested and Wolfram was going to reply that there was _no way_ that they would have gone looking for him after that, that Ken actually anticipated him.

“See you later, then”, he only stated in a firm and resolute voice, causing Wolfram to stand there gaping at him in utter shock and Saralegui to abruptly turn back, momentarily unable to hide – even if it was just a fleeting instant – his astonishment on his face.

“I’ll definitely wait for you in my private quarters, then!”, he cheerfully replied to that last confirmation and then, chuckling slightly harder than just a moment before, he finally left closing the heavy wooden door behind his back.

-&-

“So I was right!!”, an accusing tone made Sara stop in a hallway not far from the sage’s rooms, but actually that made him only smirk wider while he was giving the other one his back.

“That saves me the trouble of having to look for you, Yelshi…”, he simply uttered back, turning only then towards his twin brother. And Yelshi, looking at the sadistic light suddenly brightening Sara’s eyes, almost wished he didn’t follow him there.

“Here, follow me”, Sara went on, knowing that his brother would have obeyed him, and then he continued walking – Yelshi standing a few steps behind him – until they reached the door of his parlor and, then, the one to his bedroom, where he abruptly stopped and turned to look at his younger brother in the eye, _clearly_ planning for something…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, there! :D  
> Here I am, quite inspired and a bit surprised this third part of the story is getting so long, and not just in number of chapters (given that they are pretty shorter than the ones I posted in the other two parts), but also in word-count... XD
> 
> Actually, I had planned nothing like that in advance and I even thought about making Sara still a virgin... evidently he didn't agree with me about that point...... so this is all like a sort of a side story, LOL  
> I'm sorry - but maybe not XD - that I have such a wicked mind, eheh XD But I'm enjoying writing this story, even if sometimes I take a rest from it and I decide to write something else... And I know you hate me for that, especially because I often decide to write in italian - even if no one here reads them (but I'm also posting the italian ones on the official italian site for fanfictions) - but I really need to take a rest from it sometimes, and I have quite eclectic tastes... XD
> 
> By the way, I have quite a clear idea about at least the next three chapters, and then I hope I'll be able to reach the main part of this - side-story, because in the end it has nothing to do with their plans to reach Dai Shimaron - plot.
> 
> And also, it's just a little curiosity...... Belar IV's death wasn't planned from the beginning because at start I thought to make this part of the story go quite smoothly, but the last few chapters of the manga inspired me in that direction so, out of the blue, in my head he had to die, and who am I to disregard my muses? XD
> 
> I hope you liked this last chapter! As you can easily guess, it wasn't planned, but I feel like I need to use Yuuri a little more in this story, even if far-too-often I don't know how to do it...  
> If you liked it (or even if you found it a bit strange), please review.  
> I'd actually really like to know what you think about Yuuri's sudden jealousy! Do you think it's strange? Or the opposite? Because I think that this outburst was latent and only waiting for the right moment to come out...  
> By the way: DON'T expect anything like him who tries to gain Wolf back. I like Murata and Wolfram together too much and I like Yuuri and Flynn too! So don't feed your fantasies in that direction, please ;) Also: isn't Sara enough as a third party? *evil and corrupted smirk* (yes, I know: I'm a perfect representation of a fujoshi XD)


	13. I guess it’s time for me to grant your wish, but not yet…

The moment the door of Saralegui’s bedroom slammed closed – his brother now standing right behind him, so near that he could feel his hot breath over his neck – Yelshi stopped and stood still, watching in front of himself and trying to calm down.

“What do you have in mind?”, he asked in a slightly threatening tone, but Sara knew better: it was _fear_ what was really hidden behind his harsh voice…

Fear and nothing else.

So Sara slowly raised his hand and gently brushed his brother’s shoulder-length hair on a side, skimming over the white skin of his neck with the tip of his fingers and lingering there for a fleeting instant, enjoying the feeling of Yelshi shivering just for such a light touch.

And Yelshi, gasping softly, held his breath in, praying in his head for him to stop it.

But he actually knew that his brother wasn’t that kind.

Quite the contrary, in fact…

“… _breathe_ …”, Sara suddenly whispered in his ear in a sultry tone, getting even nearer, and then he brushed a butterfly kiss right behind his lobe. “I won’t bite you!”. Then he lightly snickered against his skin and, after a brief pause he added, evilly: “… _for now_ …”

And those last two words – that clear provocation, because his brother knew far too well how much being bitten actually aroused him – definitely killed Yelshi’s pride.

So he turned and faced him, pure desperation and frustration into his hazel eyes, and then he kneeled in front of him, his hands slightly lower than the line of his hips in a firm grip over his legs, his fingers sinking deep in his brother’s flesh.

“ _Please_ , Sara! I’ll do _anything_ , I promise, but _please_ … _free me_ ……”, he pleaded with him, no more shame or pride left. “Make me come, Sara! I’ll do anything!!, he repeated. “Please!! _I beg you!_ ”, he finally stressed the last three words almost in tears, and, in front of such a total submission – actually something that he was seeing to _that_ extent for _the first time ever_ coming from him – Sara felt a shiver run along his spine while the edges of his lips curled up in an evil, bright smile in response.

“If you ask like that”, he started, luscious, “I guess I have no choice but finally grant your wish then, this time…”, he replied at last and, in front of that unexpected – and totally unhoped-for – concession after so long, their gazes met, but what Yelshi saw in those eyes – slightly darker than his own after that day on the tower in Dai Shimaron when Yuuri had actually resurrected him – actually didn’t fit with his words in the slightest.

And in fact, a few seconds later, Saralegui added in a whisper: “ _but not yet_ …”

Because it was too good to be true…

And when Sara didn’t stop there but actually decided to clarify his own last remark, Yelshi gasped in pure horror in front of the implications behind his words.

“Our fun hasn’t started yet, after all, and, as you overheard me earlier with the sage and his fiancé, we are going to have _guests_ later……”, he specified, allusive, and Yelshi’s heart definitely stopped for a moment before he yelled a “WHAT?! You _can’t_ be serious----”

But the last word almost died in his throat in front of the wicked light he saw into his brother’s eyes and of his even more evil smile of anticipation that was literally splitting his face in half.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My gosh, I'm sorry: it's the shortest chapter EVER in the story of fanfictions! XD (at least, mine...)  
> It's less than 600 words!  
> Gomen!  
> And I guess I'm leaving you a bit hanging, but you NEED to know where this is going in two chapters (next is for clarifications, actually, because those three really really need to talk and save their friendship!)  
> By the way, it won't take long for next release... a few days, maybe...  
> Meanwhile, kisses to you all (and if you may decide to leave a review or kudos you know you'll make me happy!)


	14. Time for explanation

“How could you?!”, Wolfram snapped the moment the door of Ken’s parlor closed behind Saralegui’s back. “It’s too sudden!”

“Maybe”, Ken conceded, but then, pointing his deep black eyes on him he added: “but he is right.”, and to that, Wolfram flushed furiously.

“It’s irrelevant!”, he retorted, but Ken slightly shook his head in response.

“No, it’s not.”, he stated and then went on. “Since Shibuya came in on us earlier it seems it became impossible for me to touch your bare skin – not even your _hand_ – that you jump.”, he pointed out and Wolfram lowered his gaze feeling guilty.

“I’m just slightly tense, that’s all! It’s only _natural_ after what happened!”, he tried to justify himself, but to no avail, because his fiancé used his justification as proof that _he_ had made the right choice.

“Exactly.”, he pointed out in a flat tone, in fact. “And that’s why he will be the perfect diversion, because, after it, your mind will be full of him and me and there won’t be place for anything else.”, he blatantly explained and Wolfram swallowed loudly and turned bright red up to the tip of his ears, conscious that his lover was stating the truth.

But _that_ was what scared him the most…

“And don’t you think that I might feel _ashamed_ for that? That I’m not ready to have my head full of someone that is _not_ you?!”, he yelled back, and the dreary tone that answered to that seemed even more scathing, in comparison, than it actually was in reality.

“But you already have, don’t you? _You_ confessed it in front of us only _yesterday_.”, Ken bluntly replied, discovering that he was annoyed and that it wasn’t completely true that he wasn’t jealous of Saralegui’s influence on _his_ Wolfram. “Are you trying to deny it?”, he queried frowning deeply and the blond demon flinched and started to chew at his lower lip in frustration.

“I… well…”, he stuttered, but after a short while he collected himself again and lost it: “That doesn’t mean that I won’t feel guilty towards you! I can’t stand cheating people, and now _I_ am being one. How do you think I feel about it? Do you think that I’m happy? That I can’t wait to do it with someone else in front of my fiancé?! I want him, you are right, but I _hate myself_ for this. So _how_ can’t _you_ hate me for desiring someone other than you?!”, he cried in his face and, to that last question, Ken walked towards him and hugged him in a firm and reassuring embrace.

“I can’t hate you”, Ken whispered in a soothing voice into his ear. “I can’t hate the man I love more than anything in both worlds.”, he stated, but, to that, Wolfram raised his head and, glacial, he fixed his eyes upon him.

“You _liar_!”, he uttered, scathingly, and Murata blinked twice in front of the caustic accusation coming from his lover, an inquisitive gaze drawn on his face, waiting for an explanation.

“Who’s the man you hated _the most_ in your life?”, the blond mazoku retorted to him and, suddenly realizing the untruth in his own previous words, Ken sighed.

He was so used to lie that he didn’t even notice he did it, and he had promised to himself and to Wolfram that he would have never done it to him…

“I’m sorry…”, he replied, slightly deceived. “But you are not him. I could hate him, that’s true”, he confirmed, “but I really can’t hate _you_. Please, Wolfram: believe me.”

His eyes were firm and resolute, and, after more than a minute passed studying him, Wolfram almost decided to believe his words, but then another doubt crossed his mind.

And then another one.

“If I didn’t know better, I would have believed you earlier… how can I be certain that that wasn’t another lie?”, he asked him, skeptical but hurt, because doubting the one you love is maybe the most painful thing in the world.

“If you put it that way”, Ken sighed in response, “there’s no way that you can believe me anymore, about this or anything else.”, he stated rationally. “So now it’s only up to you.”, he said, and then he only waited for him to decide because he could do nothing more than this.

A long, tense silence followed, then, but, after a while, Wolfram broke it.

“I want to believe you.”, he declared at last, but then he went back to the main topic that made that argument start. “But I still think you shouldn’t have to decide for me earlier, because I’m not ready, and because I don’t want him to be my first.”, he bluntly stated and, to that last clarification, Ken’s eyes widened.

“Is that _really_ what is worrying you?!”, he asked, slightly surprised, and Wolfram turned pink again and didn’t answer. Because, well, that made a great deal of it, in truth…

“You should have told me that sooner, my love! I would have gladly complied!”, he uttered, still mystified that it might have been a problem for a start.

“ _That’s not it!_ ”, the blond protested, abashed, but Ken snickered  at him and gently kissed him on the mouth.

“Then you might have to come twice this evening”, he blatantly and unashamedly replied, totally ignoring his lover’s too weak protest. “…because Saralegui isn’t one you want to piss off disregarding him… we can’t go back on our word.”, he concluded in a serious voice and Wolfram bitterly retorted.

“ _Your_ word you mean…”

“…yeah… mine…”, he conceded and kissed him back, now slightly harder than before, but Wolfram pushed him away this time.

“Stop it.”, he complained and heaved a frustrated sigh. “We need to go see Yuuri, now…”, he declared and, at Yuuri’s name, Wolfram diverted his eyes from Ken’s and blushed furiously at the memory of what had happened earlier.

By the way, he tried not to think too much about it and walked towards the door, but Ken stopped him before his hand could reach the handle of it.

“Wait.”, he muttered in a peculiarly uncertain voice, and that tone alone would have been enough to make Wolfram stop right away.

Totally flabbergasted, then, Wolfram turned to watch at his fiancé with wide, surprised eyes and a deep frown on his forehead that could compete with his brother’s ones.

“Yes?”, he incited him when the silence was all that had answered back at his inquisitive look after a while, and he saw Ken divert his eyes and heard him breath heavily.

Then, the frown on Wolfram’s face became a scowl, as if sensing that he was going to get angry at whatever was going to come.

Ken sighed again, frustrated.

“Actually, before going, I think you need to know something…”, he muttered, and Wolfram’s eyebrow twitched while he hissed a murderous “what!” that was more an exclamation than a question.

Murata seemed to hesitate a little in front of his lover’s bad temper, but he guessed that he deserved it, so he grabbed his courage in his hands and spit it out… more or less…

“Actually…”, he started, still slightly hesitant, “I don’t think that the real reason behind Shibuya’s irritation and him wanting to talk to us in private is about what he accidentally witnessed earlier…”, he hinted and Wolfram frowned again, menacing.

“What do you mean?”, the blond queried, his big green eyes piercing a hole into his lover’s head, and Ken sighed for the hundredth time, but that only annoyed Wolfram more and his patience totally ran out in a few fleeting seconds.

“ _I asked you what you meant, for Shinou’s sake!!_ ”, he persisted, and Ken hesitated again but, in the end, he uttered a rueful “Actually, it might be my fault” that made Wolfram look at him in a mix of curiosity and suspicion…

“What in the world did you do to piss him off to _that_ extent that he decided to _order_ us to go see him in his quarters?”, he asked, totally appalled. “Yuuri is a wimp that _never_ gets angry at anybody, even when they _really_ deserve to taste his fury! See Saralegui, for example… and I believe that you are more a friend to him than _he_ is.”, he pointed out and Ken just snorted in response.

“I stole you away from him”, he blurted out at last, blatant, and Wolfram watched at him with round, blank eyes for a while in utter shock.

“…b—but you… you said that you and I were meant together from the start… that Yuuri couldn’t love me because of this, because us getting engaged had been a convenient arrangement concocted by Shinou for his Maoh’s sake and nothing else… you said that—”

“Stop it, Wolfram.”, Ken stepped in his panicked rambling, “that’s all true, and that’s not what I meant when I said that I stole you from him. Also: you were already free when I figured out my feelings for you and I started to court you.”, he pointed out, and, to that, Wolfram seemed to slightly calm down and he sighed in sudden relief, releasing a breath he wasn’t even aware of being still keeping.

Then his tone softened a little when he asked him once again what he really meant with his previous words, but Ken knew that what he was going to tell him would have angered his lover pretty much…

But, despite that, he also knew that he had to tell him before _Yuuri_ told him instead, because that would have only put him in even more rough and slippery terrain…

“…you should know, by now”, he started, “that I can become quite possessive sometimes…”, and, to that, Wolfram scowled at him again, the seed of the doubt not-so-slowly growing inside him.

“Then _what_?”, the mazoku persisted, but Ken continued to beat around the bush.

“Actually, I wasn’t like that from the start”, he commented, “it’s something I developed over the years—”

“I don’t care if you were it or not from the start”, Wolfram cut it short, growing impatient and sensing that his mounting rage had a meaning to be, “Go straight to the point, please. We haven’t all day, and, because of you, it seems that far-too-many people are waiting for us!”, he bitterly remarked and Ken heavily exhaled for the umpteenth time and closed his eyes for a long instant.

Then, when he opened them again, his gaze was piercing and his face stern while he bluntly stated: “I told him to stay away from you.”

“YOU DID WHAT?!”, the blond shouted so loudly that Ken was sure that Yuuri could have been able to hear him from his rooms many corridors above. “ _How dared you?!_ ”, he piled on, over the threshold of anger, and Ken silently thanked that they weren’t in Shin Makoku, because if it had been the case, he would have probably been roasted alive right on the spot. “He is the Maoh! And my friend! _Our_ friend!! Why in the world did you do that?!”, he asked, aghast, “And _behind my back_!”, he accusingly went on, totally upset. “Seriously, Ken: I’m a jealous person too, but _for all the God’s sake_!! Are you _stupid_?! He is the Maoh and I’m his best friend!”, he yelled still in disbelief for his lover’s confession and, despite the really wrong moment, at Wolfram’s last remark about being Shibuya’s _best_ friend – that he actually didn’t know, at least for sure – Ken felt a sting of jealousy hit him right in the chest. “He has all the rights to be mad at you! In his place, _I_ would be! And I _am_ mad at you for this stupid behavior, actually! And the more I stay with you and know you better, the more I can’t see _how_ they called you wise or sage! You are such a cretin, really! Or are you getting senile?”, he rubbed salt into the wound and, strangely enough, Ken seemed to have at least the decency to look abashed.

“So”, the raging fire wielder went on, “now you know what?”, he rhetorically asked, “We’re going to see Yuuri _right now_ and I’ll watch him scold you in front of my face to his heart’s content.”, he declared, totally pissed off by now. Then a glow crossed his eyes when an even crueler idea formed in his mind. “And then you know what?”, he added in a suddenly more vicious tone, “Given that we can’t step back on our word to Saralegui and that he seems to be even more a _sadist_ than you are, I think I’ll ask for his help to _submit_ you and _punish_ you so that in the future you won’t be tempted to do anything as stupid as that again.”, he spat and then he grabbed him by his elbow and he dragged him through the maze of hallways to Yuuri’s rooms, where he snapped the door open without even caring to knock, blinded by his fury and, for that same reason, luckily forgiving his own embarrassment for what had happened less than an hour and a half earlier.

And Yuuri watched at them with a stunned expression on his face when he saw them irrupt into his rooms like that.

“YUURI!”, Wolfram shouted, anger and annoyance in his voice and body language, so much that the double black momentarily thought that he had gotten angry at him, even if he couldn’t understand why he should be, all of a sudden… and after what had happened earlier, in his eyes, if Wolfram had to feel anything, it should have been mortification, really…

Then he noticed Wolf’s hand gripped around Ken’s elbow and reconsidered, silently heaving a relieved sigh in his mind.

“I’m really, really sorry that I didn’t notice earlier what _this_ cretin of my fiancé”, and he forcefully pulled Ken forward so that they could face each other, “was trying to do behind my back! If I knew he asked you to stay away from me I would have scolded him myself and, being back home, I would have, _at the very least_ , put his ass in fire!”, he colorfully explained and, at the image that formed into his mind, Yuuri almost burst out laughing. “So we came so _he_ can ask for your forgiveness” and at those words Murata’s left eyebrow slightly flinched, but Wolfram, totally uncaring, put a hand on the back of his fiancé’s head and forced him to bow at Yuuri, “and he will promise, from now on, to _never again_ attempt anything of the sort.”, he declared and then, turning towards Murata with a threatening glare, he added a menacing “ _are you not?_ ” that made Ken sigh in utter resignation and Yuuri grin in front of such a submissive Murata – definitely _not_ something you get to see every day.

“So, Yuuri”, Wolfram went on, totally pissed off. “please, feel free to scold him to your heart’s content, because he really deserves nothing less than this from you! You can punch him, shout at him, kick him in his rear, beat him to a pulp or whatever you feel like doing to him that I certainly won’t stop you!”, he stated and then he finally turned toward Ken and concluded with a “ _you ass!_ ” that definitely made Yuuri unable to keep his composure anymore.

“I believe that you were quite exhaustive already, Wolf!”, he started to snicker under his sleeve but soon it became a loud guffaw that made Wolfram glance at him in bewilderment.

“……did I say anything funny?”, the blond asked at last to no one in particular and turned slightly pink in embarrassment and, at that moment, a pair of arms enclosed him in a strong embrace that made him even redder.

“ _Oh, Wolf! I’m so happy to have you back! I missed you_ so much _!!_ ”, Yuuri cried in a joyous and relieved laughter and, despite everything, Murata wasn’t able to hide the glare he threw at him in front of such a gesture. Glare that Wolfram didn’t miss.

“Yuuri”, the demon started in fact, freeing himself from his friend’s hug with more difficulty than he thought was needed, “you sure you don’t even want me to punch him once?”, he bluntly suggested, menacing. “Because I’m still not sure that he learned his lesson…”

“There’s no need, Wolfr—”, the sage started in an annoyed tone but Yuuri’s voice cut him short.

“Oh, yes, Wolf. Please, _do_.”, he allowed. Because he had noticed the cold glare too and he didn’t like it in the slightest…

And Wolfram complied and punched him in the guts once. Hard enough to make Murata double over and almost throw up.

After that the three of them watched at each other for a while in silence, but then Yuuri approached Ken and extended him a hand in order to help him stand up again, and the sage studied his intentions for a few seconds before accepting it.

And he was right to be dubious, because the moment he was standing back on his own two feet, Yuuri got near and whispered in his ear a suggestive “I wouldn’t like to be in your place right now…”, followed by a louder “I guess that you can go back, now.”

And Wolfram snorted annoyed, but finally wrapped an arm around his lover’s waist and helped him walk out of the Maoh’s quarters.

By the way, they were by the door when Yuuri stopped them.

“Oh, and also, Wolf”, he started, a tone slightly vicious and so out of character for him normally, “feel free to decide _when_ he will have learned his lesson.”, he suggested, but then he added a more merciful “but please, don’t hurt him _too badly_ : we still need him tomorrow for the next meeting…”, he said and Wolfram mischievously winked at him.

“Don’t worry. It was already in my plans…”, he hinted and then he added: “Also: don’t wait us for dinner…”, he allusively suggested and Yuuri couldn’t refrain himself from flushing while he watched them leave his quarters.

Then the still too vivid memory of the scene he accidentally witnessed earlier surfaced and he grunted: maybe he would have needed a bit more time than that to compromise with that memory and finally overcome it, but now that Wolfram was back at his side, he knew that, a way or another, he would have succeeded in his intent and adjusted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hehe! In the end the chapter that I wanted to have Yuuri as protagonist had Wolfram (and Ken) instead... but at least the main goal I had in mind (Yuuri and Ken to make up, more or less, and Yuuri and Wolf to get near again) has been fulfilled! :D  
> Next chapter will happen many things... so wait for it ;)  
> I might need a bit of time to write it down, but I'll try to make the wait worth it ;)  
> Meanwhile, kisses to all :*


	15. How do the ropes feel?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok... this is going to be pretty hardcore and a PWP, so you're warned....  
> And there's bondage - A LOT of bondage... - But nothing violent or disturbing (I guess), so it's kind of safe.  
> I hope you'll like it even if it's a kink that not everybody appreciates...
> 
> Despite that, the kind of bondage I like is the one about restraint, and NOT violence, so it's psychological more than anything.  
> And also, I never tried it (it's just a secret kink of mine), so if anyone knows more than me about it (and I really DON'T know very much on the topic...) and sees any inconsistencies, close an eye or tell me about them, so that I can correct them! ;)
> 
> By the way, I hope you'll like this chapter.

“The punch was totally unnecessary…”, Ken whined while they were walking in the corridors heading to Saralegui’s rooms, Wolfram leading the way and him following right behind.

To that, Wolfram abruptly stopped and turned towards him, darting him a glare.

“I don’t think so.”, he stated dryly and his tone brooked no argument. “By the way I’m _sure_ that such drastic measures won’t be necessary anymore, because you’ll _only_ smile and be friendly to Yuuri after I’m done with you. That’s a promise.”

Then, scoffing, he just gave him his shoulder once more and continued to _stomp_ to his aimed destination, followed closely by a resigned Ken.

“…well… I suppose I brought this on myself, ne?”, the sage finally sighed more to himself than to Wolfram when they reached Sara’s quarters too soon.

But when they arrived right in front of the door, Wolfram abruptly stopped, suddenly hesitant, and stood still there for almost a minute, his eyes glued on the wooden panel that separated them from the Shou Shimaron’s king.

So, heaving a sigh and giving him a slightly forced smile, Ken just put a hand on his fiancé’s shoulder and made him step aside while _he_ knocked.

It took Sara several minutes to finally open the door, and when he showed up there he was wearing just a white and slightly see-through silken gown with the hint of a bulge in the front of it, his hair wasn’t exactly neatly braided in his usual loosened bun he wore in summer, his pupils were impossibly dilated and his breath was slightly hastened.

“I thought that it would have taken you longer than this”, he started in a raspy voice, “but well… your timing is actually perfect, in a way…”, he concluded, lustful and luring, while showing them inside; but where Ken followed him across the parlor, Wolfram remained frozen still by the door instead.

“Don’t be shy, Lord von Bielefeld…”, their host, noticing his reticence, suddenly switched back to the honorifics and Wolfram gulped in response, slightly bewildered after that, the last few times, in private, Saralegui had started to call him by his first name. “After all”, Sara went on, “shouldn’t _I_ be the one shy here now?”, he teased him and then walked back towards him. “You are going to have me soon, after all…”, he provocatively whispered into his ear then and, before withdrawing, he left a butterfly kiss on his neck that made the blond mazoku literally shake like a leaf and turn bright red in the face.

“…a—actually…”, Wolfram stuttered, definitely more hesitant now in front of such an enticing view than he was earlier – and he already was quite enough, despite his words to Ken before arriving there in front of Sara’s door – “…before that, I have a request…”

To these words, Sara abruptly stopped and turned to watch at him, studying him with his piercing hazel eyes for a short while until his expression changed and he offered him a broad smile in return.

“ _Wonderful_!”, he replied, eager, clapping his hands twice, and his sudden enthusiasm caught the attention of both his guests at once. “Because, you see… actually, I have one too!”, he explained in a sensual purr. “So it’s _perfect_! I’ll allow yours so you’ll have to allow mine.”, he suggested then in a tone that made it seem like everything was already settled, and there was something evil in his voice that made Wolfram shiver and Murata frown in bewilderment. “So, tell me: what is it?”, Sara went on, totally ignoring the others’ bafflement, and, in that same moment, Ken decided to stay out of the ‘negotiations’, almost sure of what was coming and already knowing that Wolfram might have had something to say about it if only he knew…

But well: if he had to bear with Wolfram ‘punishing’ him, Wolfram could bear with whatever Saralegui had in mind…

And in the meanwhile the mazoku, on his behalf, at the young king’s words and eagerness, almost changed his mind…

 _Almost_ …

“I’d want you to help me punish my fiancé for something he didn’t have to do and so that he won’t do it again in the future.”, he stated, resolved, but his heart was hammering hard in his chest when he spoke.

Then, in front of that _totally_ _unpredictable_ request coming from a masochist like Wolfram (or, at least, he was it with the sage, and it was _evident_ that it was the case since the day they had arrived to the mansion) and without his _master_ ’s complaints, Saralegui burst out laughing, literally delighted by the prospect.

“I will gladly share my knowledge and arts with you in order to grant your wish, my lord!”, he eagerly replied and evilly smirked at Ken in the meanwhile… a smirk able to make a shiver run down the sage’s spine despite his perfected-over-the-years self-control.

“Then, what’s yours?”, Wolfram finally mustered the courage to ask him back and the smirk on Sara’s face widened even more, if possible.

“You will allow my brother to watch”, he stated then, as a matter of fact, perfectly knowing that the blond couldn’t complain about it _now_ after their agreement. But that didn’t prevent Wolfram from shouting a “ _what?!_ ” that made Sara sneer and Ken heave a very deep and unsurprised sigh.

“ _You knew!?_ ”, Wolfram suddenly protested, addressing his fiancé at the flat glance he had thrown at him in front of his astonishment, and Ken shrugged in response and sighed again.

“I could guess as much”, he only replied and while Saralegui snickered at them bickering, Wolfram froze once more.

“Why didn’t you stop me, then?!”, the blond mazoku complained, but Ken only rolled his eyes at him before answering a flat: “You deemed necessary to punch me, earlier, as much as you decided to ‘punish’ me for what I did, asking Saralegui for help. I just _accepted your decision_ ”, he sharply remarked, “and, knowing you”, he went on, “I acted so that _your_ _resolution_ wouldn’t waver before everything meant to grant your wish was settled.”, he retorted with an evil glare and then he rubbed salt in his fiancé’s wounded pride. “You should thank me, love…”, he concluded then in a slightly sarcastic tone and a sadistic grin despite the position he would have needed to take shortly, and, in the background, Saralegui openly sneered at the scene unwinding in front of his eyes and at their little quarrel.

In Sara’s eyes, after all, it would have been strange if Ken hadn’t decided to reaffirm his role before starting, actually… but those two really _never_ disappointed him!

“So…”, Saralegui suddenly stepped in their lovers’ bicker, “shall we finally move to my bedroom? Yelshi is already waiting for us there…”, he hinted with a vicious smirk painted on his face, and Ken only nodded at him and followed in silence where Wolfram showed a little more reticence but, in the end, he complied too.

After all, he hadn’t so much of a choice by now…

And what they saw when Sara opened the door to his bedroom left _even Ken_ flabbergasted… but the picture in front of his eyes was also extremely arousing, even if in kind of a wicked way, maybe…

Yelshi, in fact, was hanging in the air, held up by an intricate motif of knots and ropes that twined his chest in a harness and then pinned him to a bar hanging from the ceiling, with both his ankles and wrists tied up and his back bent in a sensual arch; and he was totally naked except for a shiny chastity cage and the ropes that wrapped his entire body in a decorative pattern apt to efficiently but, at the same time, artistically, restrain even the slightest of movements and to mortify him to a level not easily conceivable.

And where Ken watched that peculiar picture in awe, totally enraptured by the ‘art’ that Saralegui had been able to create, Wolfram, on the other hand, diverted his eyes and turned white as a sheet, instinctively identifying himself with Yelshi before his rational part could remind him that he wasn’t the one bound like that and neither the one who was going to be it.

“Actually”, Ken started, deliberately ignoring his lover’s reaction and almost salivating in front of what was in front of his eyes, his black orbs lustfully widened. “I haven’t seen anything taken to such an extreme in person since my last life”, he commented eagerly while smiling wickedly at their host. “I must admit that I’m _impressed_.”

“I hope you will be equally impressed even after we are done with you…”, Sara replied, grinning equally evilly and Ken sneered.

“Well”, he replied, delighted, “I usually prefer to take the leading role, especially when the game becomes rough, only because it’s almost _impossible_ to find a good partner who masters that art so that I can enjoy that kind of game to its fullest”, he explained, “but you seem to be _exceptionally_ gifted and _extremely_ skilled”, he profusely complimented him, “so I confess that I can’t wait to try it…”, he purred and a heavy sigh that sounded like a moan escaped his throat while Sara wantonly licked his own lips in anticipation too.

And, that precise instant, what surprised the Shou Shimaron’s king the most was that he suddenly discovered to secretly share the sage’s opinion about that matter when a thought he had _never_ had before then formed in his mind and he sensed that maybe he would have been almost as eager as him to submit to someone with his skills…

 _Maybe_.

“I’ll do my worst, then…”, he mischievously hinted, moving his mind from that last contemplation, and Ken scoffed in response now.

“I expect nothing less from you, actually…”, he retorted with a clearly feigned attitude and, while saying it, he started to undress, totally unconcerned by the extra-audience and even by his fiancé’s growing reticence and tension in front of all that.

And Wolfram, in fact, stared in a stunned silence with wide eyes and a raising-like-crazy heartbeat, torn about whether to go with his original intent or to run away – and yes, _run_ – as far and as fast as his feet would have actually brought him.

And if it was an available option, Wolfram was sure that he would have chosen that; but it wasn’t, so he just stayed, his eyes fixed on those two while they were flirting with each other because looking at Yelshi was too much for him at the moment.

“So, _Wolfram_ …”, Sara suddenly turned towards him and now he addressed him directly, switching back to his first name and shaking him out of his train of thoughts but _not_ of his visceral fear that mounted inside of him even if he knew that all that wasn’t meant for _him_ , “what did you have in mind?”, he asked in another purr. “Do you want me to teach you how to do it, or do you prefer to watch me while I discipline him? Actually, if you prefer to leave it to me, I’m quite confident that I can arrange a nice show for your entertainment…”

And to that suggestion, Wolfram swallowed hard a couple of times, his throat impossibly dry, before being able to put together _three_ words that came out in a raspy voice and that he didn’t know they were his true feelings about all that before they came out of his lips: “Please teach me”.

Then, another wicked and mischievous smile formed on Saralegui’s lips at the words and he invited Wolfram to join him where he was with just a slight wave of a hand.

What he didn’t expect, however, was Ken promptly intercepting the blond midway and throwing his arms around his fiancé’s neck with a very rare case of puppy eyes – definitely something unusual to see on him.

“ _Please_ , my love: let _him_ tie me up. I’ll do anything. I _swear_.”, he begged, his voice hoarse with lust and expectations, and Wolfram swallowed hard at the mere thought of his lover looking like Yelshi now and at the proactive request coming from his fiancé. So, in the end, in front of such an unashamed and heartfelt plea, he finally nodded once, his breath frantic and rough too, and he started to chew and lick at his lips while Sara’s grin grew wider than ever.

“Then it’s decided…”, Sara purred for the hundredth time, thrilled, and then he moved to go take some other ropes out of the second drawer of his nightstand. Then he turned towards Wolfram and invited him to sit on the bed while ‘enjoying the show’ until he was finished.

So Wolfram, even if still slightly hesitant, made as he was told and, strung tight as a violin, he finally sat on the edge of Saralegui’s bed, his hands clasped around his knees so hard that his knuckles were white.

Ken saw it and raised a hand toward Saralegui, silently asking for a moment, and the blond king slightly nodded at him in agreement.

“Don’t be so tense, my love”, the sage gently stated while reaching Wolfram there and kneeling at his feet, offering him some reassurance. “Try to relax and enjoy the show.  Here: I’ll stay near you if you like, so that you can touch me whenever you want.”, he suggested with a smile, his tone patient and encouraging, and, to that, Wolfram finally seemed to slightly loosen up.

At least a bit.

So the blond mazoku chewed at his lower lip and nodded again, and Ken offered him another kind and affectionate smile before finally turning towards Sara once more and silently hinting at him to approach with a slight gesture of his head.

“Rest assured that I won’t hurt him.”, Saralegui decided to reassure Wolfram too in a soft murmur and he offered him a light kiss on the cheek that left _all_ of them at least a little surprised.

And Sara, noticing that, chuckled in response and, to accentuate the contrast with his previous kind gesture, he tugged the ends of the bent rope in his hands so to make it loudly snap.

“Now…”, he started then with a sadistic smirk curving up his lips, “Shall we start?”, and he released one end only to tease the sage with it, allowing the rope to skim over his naked body so to provoke a reaction to it.

And, as expected, Ken visibly shivered in delight and anticipation while a hint of a lustful smile appeared on his face.

“Mmh… where shall I start?”, Sara mumbled, teasingly turning around him and finally really starting the game.

And he and Ken crossed their gazes for just a fleeting instant, but somehow it was enough for Saralegui to know what the sage wanted and needed and, to that, his lips mischievously curved up more.

Then, without a single word, he just unreeled the rope, bent it in half and then, positioning himself in front of him, he started from his wrists and then, making sure to fasten the cord to the hanging bar that ran across the entire room so to force him to raise his arms, he took another rope – a very long one this time – that was laying on the floor, he bent this one too in half and then, moving behind him, he twined it around Ken’s arms at the level of his eyes twice in a four layers rope, blinding him.

“You don’t need them”, Sara stated only in a vicious tone and then, after fastening the rope in place, from the back of Ken’s head he went down until he reached the neck level, where he delicately twined the rope again in another four layers before continuing down again, where he turned the rope around his middle-chest twice and then blocked it on the back and transformed the extra-length in a long heaving line knot that ran from there up to his neck.

Then he promptly took the third rope from the floor and, from behind, he embraced Ken with his arms and cord, leaving a butterfly kiss on his neck in the meanwhile and enjoying the hard shiver he provoked in the other.

Then he continued with his ‘mission’ and he decorated his naked body with a pentagram chest harness.

“Beautiful”, Sara commented while admiring his own ‘job’ when also the third rope ended, and even Wolfram, who was really conflicted at the moment about his feelings on all of that, regretted not to have a canvas and oils with him to capture that piece of art that was taking shape right there in front of his eyes.

…but now started the part that Sara liked the most so, broadly smiling at Wolfram and totally ignoring his brother on the other hand, he collected another rope and then went back to work on the blind sage.

So, freeing the knot that blocked Ken's wrists to the bar and pulling at the rope, he made Ken rise on his knees and then on his feet and, with just a soft nudge with his knee, Sara made him understand that he wanted him to slightly open his legs.

And Ken did so right away, but then he suddenly got distracted by an unintelligible murmur not too distant from where he was.

Then, he soon heard some movement coming from where he was pretty sure that there was the bed and, only a few moments later, he found himself unable to suppress a groan when a pair of wet lips around his stirred manhood and a skilled tongue working on it while a new rope was moving and being fastened around the base of his left thigh, slightly brushing against his balls, stole him his breath.

“Wolfram, please! _Stop_! I’m going to come!”, Ken gasped – the first words filling the room after what seemed like an eternity – and the blond, not at all used to his fiancé asking him to stop in such a desperate tone, taken aback, obeyed right away and looked at him with confused and surprised eyes, even if Ken couldn’t see it.

Then Saralegui whispered something else to the demon – something Ken couldn’t grasp this time either – but when he felt Wolfram’s tongue playing with the tip of his stiffened arousal once again, he knew which were Saralegui’s orders to his fiancé: ‘tease him but don’t make him come’.

Frustrated, then, he heaved a sigh, but, in a way, Saralegui seemed to know what _he_ , in his place, would have done and he was doing it, step by step, in the same order even, and that awareness actually had the strange power to calm and reassure him, and to such an extent that he felt totally at ease.

And it was such an odd feeling that he even sensed that he could be able to control his body reactions so to enjoy Wolfram’s ministrations down there together with Saralegui’s skillful hands and ropes working on him without risking to come before Sara’s cords could be placed so to prevent him from that occurrence.

And so it was.

Then Wolfram went back to the bed and Sara continued to work on Ken’s legs, making him kneel once more and tiding his thighs with his calves but deciding to leave him laying on the ground – at least for now.

When the sage couldn’t move a single muscle anymore, then, Saralegui reached a pair of scissors and freed his eyes, cutting where he knew that wouldn’t have made a difference on all the other bound parts.

“And now”, Sara spoke at last, addressing Wolfram and breaking the silence that had filled the room until then, “before anything else, I suggest you take me.”

“ _Now_?!”, the mazoku gasped, totally taken aback by the young king’s words.

And Sara scoffed, as if knowing that the other would have reacted like that from the start.

“Yes, Wolfram: _now_ ”, he persisted in a tempting but resolute tone.

“But I…”

“Listen to my advice, Wolfram.”, Sara cut him short then. “He can wait… am I right, _Ken_?”, he asked the sage now and, knowing what a strong effect had his name on him for some reason, he used it on purpose and, while sensually pronouncing it, he finally removed his own gown in a single gesture and he let it fall on the floor where he abandoned it.

And to that, the sage didn’t answer in words – that in that moment had just died in his throat – but his eyes were exhaustive enough.

Hesitant, then, Wolfram complied and started to finally undress too, first his shirt and then his pants and underpants; but all that tension and shock and surprise didn’t help his mood and, in fact, his manhood reflected his renewed uneasiness showing itself as only half-stirred at the moment.

In response to that, Sara hid a soft sigh.

“What about your fiancé helping you get all ready and wet for my hungry hole?”, he suggested with no shame in him and Wolfram turned pink while Yelshi, almost forgotten a few meters from there, turned bright red in a fit of jealousy instead. “His mouth is empty and needy, after all, don’t you agree?”, Sara continued in a lustful voice, ignoring them; and Ken, on his behalf, sensing that Wolfram _needed_ his support too now, even if it cost him a titanic effort, he decided anyway to incite him too to follow the other’s advice.

“Yeah, my lion”, he moaned, his voice hoarse and needy and his tone as much eager as he could in that situation where his breath was hastened because of the tightness of the ropes confining his ribcage, and where his arousal was constricted and forbidden to cum when, on the other hand, a clever knot right at the base of his testicles actually stimulated him instead at the very slightest movement he made. “Come here and let me lick you. I want you in my mouth, love. I need you to fill me up somehow. My mouth is so empty right now and my tongue wants to taste you so badly.”, he wantonly proclaimed in nothing more than a whisper. Then, to be even more incisive, he didn’t take his aroused gaze off his fiancé’s green orbs, not even for a second.

To that, Wolfram gulped and started to nip at his lower lip, uncertain, and he stayed where he was, because he still thought it would be better if Ken were his first… After all, _he_ was his fiancé!

But, on the other hand, at the same time a rebellious part of him couldn’t stop thinking that, until then, _he_ had always been the one pushed to the limit whenever the sage was jealous, angry or simply _unhappy_ about silly things he often didn’t even know of. So, seeing Ken like that, in a reverse-from-usual situation, he discovered that he could actually enjoy it too as the other two were already doing.

And so, in the end, he eventually decided to comply and to follow their suggestions.

Slowly, then, he walked towards his fiancé and, taken his own shaft in a hand, he not-so-kindly and quite impatiently put it in Ken’s mouth and he ordered him to lick it. And, cruelly enough, he didn’t tell him when he was ready to cum and he filled his mouth with his semen when the moment came.

Then he kneeled in front of him to lower down at his level and sloppily kissed him, tasting himself together with his lover’s spit.

“Now you’ll have to start again…”, Wolfram abruptly and maliciously teased him in a purring whisper and, now, both Saralegui and Ken scoffed at him at the same time, both of them vaguely annoyed at Wolfram, even if for slightly different reasons that, however, brought at the same result: a delay in their final pleasure.

So Ken groaned in frustration but then silently started again while Sara, now growing impatient, decided that he was tired of waiting and, laying on the bed, he brought his hand to his manhood while, with the other, he fingered himself, moaning and groaning so loud that Wolfram almost came once again in his fiancé’s mouth.

When he was at his limit, then, he brusquely grabbed Ken by his hair and pulled him away and, without a single word, he just joined Saralegui on the bed under Yelshi’s horrified eyes and his lover’s lustful ones.

But he didn’t take him right away and, eagerly descending upon him, he bit Sara hard on the neck instead, bringing him almost over the edge with just that and stealing him a wild groan of surprise and pleasure that covered his twin’s suffocated growl of resentment coming from the other side of the room.

But Sara heard it, and a light chuckle escaped his lips regardless.

Then Wolfram descended more, in a path and pattern that Ken knew very well and that made him almost go crazy every time that his fiancé decided to use it on him: in contrast with the roughness of the previous gesture, in fact, the blond demon started to leave soft and light kisses along the line of Sara’s left clavicle, moving up to the shoulder and then along the outer line of his arm and down to the back of his hand and his fingertips and then backwards, following an imaginary line that started from his middle finger and ran across his palm, his wrist, the inner line of his arm and up to the armpit, until he reached his first goal – his left nipple – where he definitely took his time with his tongue and lips. And then, when even Wolfram’s white teeth came into play and he decided to take his time there while using them too, Sara came and, on the other hand, Ken heaved a guttural whine while his seed started to leek out despite the restraint at the base of his shaft, as if he could feel Wolfram working on him instead in that very moment. And Ken, in fact, like Sara did right then, always came at that point too.

After that Wolfram, smirking satisfied, continued his path of butterfly kisses along Saralegui’s side and hip, causing a tickling shiver in the blond and almost one even in his lover, who was watching totally helpless a few meters from there.

Then, to leave the man under him some time to recover, Wolfram didn’t stop where Sara would have expected him to but continued instead, down and down, leaving light bites and kisses along his left leg and foot, and when he finally noticed that his body was reacting once more, he came up again from the inner side of his calf and thigh until he sank his face in that soft and delicate part of a man under the male’s tool of supreme pleasure, stealing Sara a guttural groan of need and lust that suddenly echoed in the room.

“ _Enter. Now._ ”, Sara ordered in a roar, his voice hoarse and needy as it so rarely happened even in private with his brother because, with him, he was always in control.

But Wolfram had taken him by surprise with his sudden initiative after he had acted so hesitant all the rest of the time earlier…

And the blond over him obeyed, as if it was natural for him even if it was his first time taking the lead and, this time, both Ken and Yelshi tried to distract themselves from what was happening on the bed because, in their restrained condition, the situation had started to grow too aching for their bodies to stand even just the _view_ of it.

When Wolfram had spent himself in Saralegui, then, he finally splayed himself next to the Shou Shimaron’s king and panted his ‘defeat’.

“I’m exhausted… I can’t do it one more time.”, and then he whispered a ‘sorry’ while closing his eyes to rest and take back his breath.

A disappointed sigh freed from Ken’s lips at that, but, actually, he had seen it coming since the moment his fiancé had spent himself in his mouth...

But well: if he was there to be punished, that one he got was definitely a _royal_  treatment.

He sighed again and Sara, from the bed, chuckled lightly, sensing what the sage was thinking as if it was something obvious.

“No need for you to say sorry”, the young halfblooded king replied to the man at his side. “You wanted to punish him, and this is perfect for your aim… he knows it too, don’t you worry.”

“But…”, Wolfram started then, turning to watch at Ken and giving Sara his back while offering an apologetic look to his lover.

Without another word, then, Sara gathered his strength, climbed out of bed and started to skillfully untie the sage. And then, when even the last rope fell on the floor, he offered Ken a hand to help him stand up.

“You should go back, now. It’s almost time for dinner.”, he suggested and then, asking them to refer to the others that they wouldn’t have joined the rest of the group for dinner, he watched them leave.

And only when they left them alone he reached Yelshi and started to untie him too, removing his cage too for the _first_ time since when he had put it on him almost a year before then.

 

It was the first time that Sara had done it with someone other than Yelshi and, even if it was indeed thrilling and even if his brother was there with him to watch and to reassure him, in a way, with his presence, now he felt peculiarly empty.

“Take me”, he stated only, a plea more than an order, and he sounded oddly tired.

Despite that, Yelshi was sure that, even if he had asked him what was wrong, Sara wouldn’t have answered his questions. So he kept quiet and just obeyed, trying to concentrate on his craved and finally regained freedom instead of his brother’s unusual attitude.

And Yelshi was a man, and he really, _really_ needed release after almost a year, so he eventually succeeded with his intent of focusing on his own pleasure, but his thoughts and doubts were soon back after his physical needs got finally fulfilled.

And he decided to ask anyway.

“What is it, Sara?”, and his brother heaved a sigh and remained silent for a long while before stating a tired: “I decided that it was enough. You can stop wearing it, if you want.”

But Yelshi, even if in a different moment and situation he was sure that he would have jumped in joy and relief, now he only felt empty all of a sudden.

Empty and full of fear…

“Are you choosing them instead of me?”, he queried, and his panic showed in his tone and words so much that Sara couldn’t restrain a scoff in response even if his answer, in the end, was totally serious.

“No.”, he replied dryly and almost horrified, as if it was _obvious_. “And even if I am undoubtedly attracted to them both, I love _you_.”, he stated for the _first_ time in earnest and Yelshi’s eyes widened in shock at the abrupt confession.

“Really?”, was all he was able to ask, still too appalled by that new as much as unexpected consciousness, and Sara snapped at him in response, starting to get truly offended.

“What did you believe, silly?!”

Slightly abashed, Yelshi diverted his eyes while replying.

“I thought you hated me…”, he confessed, and Sara chortled at that.

“How can I hate you when you love me so much?!”, he asked him as if it was impossible to even _conceive_ anything different. “Did you really think that I was lying all the times that I stated that I loved you?!”, he rubbed it in. “ _Really_!”, he snapped, now totally upset. “I can understand when a stranger accuse me of feigning, but _you_?! …I didn’t think you were _this_ stupid, Yelshi…”

Then he calmed himself and sighed, resigned, but he also kissed him on the lips, half annoyed and half secretly _relieved_ that he had finally been able to convey his feelings to him for the first time, it seemed, after so long.

“You are so stupid…”, he repeated in a peculiarly gentle and affectionate tone then and, this time, Yelshi retorted.

“And you are so twisted… but I love you too, even if I hate you almost as much.”, he concluded and gave his brother a light kiss behind his ear, stirring a light shiver in him.

But only one thought formed in Sara’s head in reply to that last comment, and sadly it was something that he couldn’t share with him: ‘ _I’m doing it for you…_ ’, and, with that only secret consolation, Saralegui finally placed his head in the crook of his twin’s neck and, at last, he fell asleep there, next to the only person he was able to sleep with, followed by Yelshi not long afterwards.

But the last reflection that filled Sara’s mind before he finally abandoned himself to slumber was one and only one: “How do the ropes really feel?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! If you feel like sharing your opinion about this last chapter/topic with me I'll be reeeeeally really glad to read them!  
> Meanwhile, kisses and see you in next chapter ;)


	16. What aren't you telling me, Murata?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well... in this chapter Murata might seem slightly OOC, but actually one of my aims in this part of the story is to make him slowly break under the weight of his doubts and choices, but don't you fear: after that everything is going to sort out just fine. But there'll be more ups and downs and sometimes angst moments along the way to the end, because they all have to gain their own happy ending. :p  
> Btw, I hope you'll enjoy this chapter too and that you'll continue to follow me.

“Wolfram, love”, Ken started once he closed the door of Sara’s quarters behind his back, his tone slightly concerned. “What is it?”, he asked, but the blond turned pink in embarrassment and glared at him.

“That’s not anything that can be discussed in a place like that, stupid Ken! So don’t ask me! …you really are wise just in name!”, he complained and Ken chuckled in response – thing that made Wolfram only get angrier, as always.

“There, there!”, the sage’s easygoing attitude showed itself at that. “So: why don’t we go back to my bedroom and you let me melt away all your concerns, one by one?” he suggested, tempting, and Wolfram, at the allusive offer, turned bright red in the face this time.

“…Sara asked us to tell the others that they won’t join for dinner…”, the mazoku seemed to suddenly remember and Ken lightly sighed.

“We can send a note to Lady Flynn through a servant”, he suggested, but Wolfram seemed unconvinced.

“And how are we going to explain that _we_ are doing it and not one of them? How can we explain how we know?”, the blond protested and, even if making up a story would have been a piece of cake for him, he didn’t want to argue, so he just complied.

“Ok: then how about you go back to my quarters and wait for me in my bed while I go to Flynn’s office and tell her before I join you there?”, he offered and that arrangement seemed to satisfy Wolfram quite enough, so he just nodded and, with a light and chaste kiss on the cheek, while parting ways from him, he silently waved a hand at Ken and headed towards his fiancé’s rooms.

Heaving a sigh in resignation, then, the sage turned his back at his lover and went to pay a very quick visit to their host.

…or so he thought…

He knocked at her office door where he luckily found her at the first attempt and then, when the woman allowed him to enter, he only stuck his nose into the room with his jovial attitude instead. “My Lady! King Saralegui asked me to tell you that Yelshi Heika isn’t feeling well today, so he took him to his quarters and is going to watch over him there. He asked me to tell you that they won’t join you for dinner and to ask if you can arrange to send them something to eat there… and actually, since I’m here, Lord von Bielefeld and I would like to have dinner in my quarters too if it is not a problem.”, he broadly smiled at her and the woman, even if slightly taken aback by the partly unexpected request – at least the part concerning Saralegui and Yelshi – she nodded.

After that, Ken was ready to leave when a well-known voice coming from the sofa that was right behind the door, out of his sight-line, spoke to him in Japanese.

“ _Matte._ ”, the young man that was his king stopped him, his tone at least an octave lower than usual, almost threatening, and Ken silently cursed himself for not checking the room before speaking out of rush.

And, this time, taken aback, he flinched despite himself…

“Oh, Shibuya! You here too?”, he chuckled and smiled at him, friendly as he’d always been before Wolfram became his goal and, then, _his_ , and as he’d promised less than a couple of hours earlier. “What’s up?”

“How come you’ve become Sara’s errand-boy when Wolfram should have been taking care of you?”, he sharply replied and his voice and presence was more like the Maoh’s than the usual Shibuya Yuuri…

And it was just a fleeting instant, but Ken hesitated and it was such a rare occurrence that it didn’t pass unnoticed.

“Now, now, Shibuya! How mean!”, he joked, smiling innocently in the vain attempt to create a diversion, but it was too late.

“Don’t fuck with me. What’s going on?”, Yuuri cut him off, and Ken’s left eyebrow tilted up at the ‘fuck’ coming out from his always controlled mouth.

“Now, now!”, Ken repeated in the attempt to defuse the atmosphere ever so slightly, but it didn’t work. Still, he tried to keep his tone light in front of lady Flynn. “Nothing’s going on, obviously! I was coming here to make sure that our host knew that Wolfram and I would have liked to have dinner in my quarters and I crossed path with Saralegui who was coming here for the same reason. We chatted a little and it came out that his brother isn’t feeling well and that he was coming here to tell Lady Flynn about his needs, so I just happened to offer him to tell her in his stead, given that I was already heading here.”

Yuuri studied him for almost a minute in silence from the sofa where he was sat, but that explanation seemed far too much _reasonable_ to be the truth after his surprised reaction of a moment earlier and, in fact, while watching at him, his eyes caught a glimpse of a mark on the skin of his friend’s throat.

In front of that, the demon king’s eyes widened and, before Ken could register what was going on, Yuuri was on him, his hand pulling down the rim of his shirt on the collar.

“What’s that?”, Yuuri queried in an angry hiss and Ken frowned again even if he felt a wave of shame raising up and peculiarly heating his cheeks.

Then he smiled again, trying to defuse the situation, while a hand moved on its own and clenched around the Maoh’s wrist in the attempt to let him loosen the grip and let go.

“Come on, Shibuya…”, he tried and a slightly sheepish glance was thrown at the landlady. “You don’t want to make a fuss in front of our kind host, do you?”, he asked, eagerly, but that instant Yuuri’s gaze fell on the other’s wrist and forearm, now that the shirt had slid down and had uncovered it.

“What’s that, I said!”, he repeated dryly, now no more a question but an order. “Wolfram is _not_ into this kind of stuff! Tell me what’s going on between you and Sara! You couldn’t stand him and now you chat a lot, you stopped referring to him formally as you always did and you’ve even become his errand-boy! What the hell did you put Wolfram into?! I left him to you, but I _don’t_ want you to corrupt him!”

But to these last words, Ken’s eyes darted a feral glare at Yuuri for an instant, but then his expression softened again and he turned towards Lady Flynn.

“I’m sorry, my lady… I know it’s quite selfish of me to ask you for such a favor, but would you kindly leave your office to us for a short while, please?”, and his tone was still quite cheerful in a way, but it was clear that he wouldn’t have accepted a ‘no’ for an answer so, without a single word in return, the woman just nodded at him and, rising from her seat, she obliged and left them.

When the door closed again and Ken and Yuuri remained alone in there, then, the sage finally snapped and, in all his growing fury, for the first time he decided to use his powers against his king, even if he knew that rebelling to him would have hurt him as badly as he would have hurt the Maoh.

And Yuuri fell on his knees, his hands at his temples, and Ken got pale as a sheet but managed to stand only because he knew what was coming and he mentally prepared for it beforehand.

That sudden attack, by the way, had the unpleasant consequence of fully awakening the Maoh like, in the last year, never really happened – at least not like this, or at least not in front of his eyes.

“How dared you, you filth!”, the Maoh hissed, quickly recovering and standing up again and in no more than a couple of seconds he was on Ken and, grabbing him by his collar with one hand, with the other he packed a punch that hit him right in the stomach.

Ken doubled over, aching, but he punched him back, uncaring again about the consequences and about his evident physical disadvantage: he was too furious for that.

“You didn’t leave him _to me_.”, he hissed, his voice threatening like Yuuri really _never_ heard it before then. “You _threw_ him away. You threw away a gift that you should have _never_ received for a start! A gift that was meant to be _mine_! If at least you had made him happy none of us would have suffered like that and I would have accepted to leave him to you, and maybe I would have _never_ known about it in the first place!”, he retorted, hostile like he’d never really been and Yuuri sensed the difference and, shaken by Ken’s words, he calmed down and came back to his senses.

“…what do you mean?”, he only asked, his eyes fixed in his friend’s ones, as black as his own, and he became reasonable again, his tone serious but his attitude definitely constructive. Basically the usual Yuuri.

To that, at last, Ken calmed too and finally realized what, out of anger, came out of him mouth.

And really, looking back at all his past lives, he remembered being this emotional and mentally unstable _only_ around Shinou, and, made exception for the last years of Geneus’ life and the first lives after his first, it had been like that only during the week that his _husband_ had totally erased from his mind and that he had retrieved after he died the first time and the seal on that memory was finally broken…

…this was how much Wolfram turned his life and heart upside down…

This was how much Wolfram was important to him, and that sudden realization actually perturbed him and made him reconsider all his words, actions and behavior of the last two month towards Yuuri more than he already did the last time that, in a fit of jealousy, he had snapped at him.

…and it was only two months, or rather, only _almost_ two months!

He slightly flinched at the thought, and maybe he had to reconsider his words he said to Wolfram about the ones he had loved in his life too… maybe his guilt feelings had convinced him that he loved Rufus as much as he had loved Shinou, that what he had felt for her was more than just affection…

But _four_ _thousand_ _years_ to fall in love again after his _first_ love…

Not that one more would have made such a difference on that matter, but the first one was _Shinou_ , and he actually still loved him even after four thousand years.

He could deny it – and he still did more often than not – but he knew that it was the truth…

And that love, on the long run, had almost turned him crazy… and he had grown to hate the man…

True, he had his reasons to despise him, to hold a grudge, but if he tried hard enough, he could remember those pitiful lives… those lives lived in despair during which madness touched him…

And now, in less than two months, he had already lost the most part of his composure wherever and whenever Wolfram was concerned… but, on the other hand, being loved so fully and deeply was such a nice feeling… so fulfilling!

…but he was losing all that he had gained in four thousand years of suffering and hard work…

Wolfram was crushing the mask he wore for centuries into smithereens at lightning speed… but then, after him, what?

For a moment he panicked and his breath stopped.

“Hey, Murata… are you all right?”

Luckily for him, Yuuri’s words shook him from his thoughts enough to recover and even feign he was ok.

“Yeah… _Gomen_ , _gomen_ , Shibuya”, he said, distractedly, and Yuuri knew that those words came out of his mouth only to convince him of a lie and that they were empty. But this time, for once, he could see that they came out more like out of habit than to deceive him in any way.

Out of concern, then, following his instinct, Yuuri silently and tightly hugged him.

And Ken gasped in surprise for the sudden gesture and he tried to free himself, but to no avail.

“Yu—Yuuri…”, he stuttered, uncertain, chuckling in embarrassment while still attempting to step back and free himself from the other’s grip, but Yuuri shushed him.

“Shut up, you moron.”, he ordered. “I’m your friend before being your king, and I’m here to listen so, please, allow me, because it is my duty to take every stone engraving your heart on me and lighten your path to a brighter future.”, he finished gently, and those last words made Ken’s last bastion of defense finally crush and tears started to flow from his black eyes like it had only happened once, at the temple with Shinou that night when the man – or better, spirit – had found him sat on the Inferno on the Tundra, more or less one month and a half earlier.

And when Ken’s shoulders started to tremble in silent sobs, Yuuri finally noticed that something was wrong with his friend.

So, at last, he released him, gently, and he lightly patted him on his back and caressed his head like his mother always did with him when he was a child, but when he attempted to move so that he could watch him in the eye, Murata promptly grabbed him by his shirt and buried himself into the crook of his shoulder again.

“…you were right… this time you were right, damn you…”, he started to blabber in a sort of delirium and Yuuri’s eyes widened in confusion to Ken’s words. “What’ll be of me then? …I’m not…strong enough… to build myself again… from scratches… _Curse you!_ ”, he swore. “You knew that it would have _never_ worked but... despite that you did it… and we suffered… but I… _now I see_ … I’m screwed, brother, _I’m screwed_ …”, he stuttered among hiccups now, unable to keep his tongue at bay anymore, switching the reality in front of his eyes – the 27th Maoh – with the past him – or part of the past him – the first demon king of the at-the-time- _new_ reign of Shin Makoku.

For a moment Yuuri froze when Ken called him ‘brother’, but it wasn’t the moment to try to understand how in the world his friend – someone who was always in control of what happened around him – could ever mistake him for Shinou out of the blue.

“Everything will surely work out just fine, I promise.”, he tried to reassure him for what he could, but Ken, still out of it, snapped back at him again against his shirt.

“How can you promise anything like that when you were the first one who messed everything up from the very start, you idiot!?”, the sage retorted, angered, but when at last he raised his gaze on the man he was complaining to, he flinched back, startled, and, pretty obviously paling, he finally jumped back into reality and he abruptly realized where he was and, above all, _who_ he was talking to.

The two stared at each other for like an eternity, Ken’s eyes peculiarly wide and his words caught up in his throat like it almost never happened.

He was so out of it that Yuuri even felt the urge to put his hands on his friend’s shoulders and shake him.

“Hey, you! Get a grip of yourself, you hear me?!”, he spurred him and, at last, the sage swallowed soundly.

“I’m ok now, Shibuya…”, he managed at last after a long, mortifying moment. “Sorry for that… I really don’t know what’s gotten into me all of a sudden. I’m sorry that you even had to humor me and listen to my ramblings…”

Without a single word, then, Yuuri took him by his elbow and guided him to the sofa in the corner of the room.

“Instead of saying sorry, it’s time that you finally start to explain what’s going on and what’s that you’re not telling me. Also… for you to mistake me for Shinou…I find it pretty odd, unless you know something that I don’t…”, he suggested and Ken puckered his lips in a thin line and heaved a very deep sigh in response to that.

“Please, Murata. Tell me. We’re friends, are we not? You can talk to me about anything! I won’t judge you, I promise.”, the young demon king insisted and Ken gave in eventually.

“…I guess you deserve it, after all…”, the sage complied, but then he rose from his seat and, with another sigh, he extended a hand to his friend. “But Lady Flynn’s office is not the right place for such a long conversation, don’t you agree, Shibuya?”

Then he sadly smiled at him when Yuuri took his arm and stood up too, ready to move from there.

“It seems that today’s dinner will be pretty lonely… everybody’s ditching it, for a reason or another…”, Yuuri commented and Ken chuckled slightly while, before leaving, he reached Flynn’s desk and left a note in case they wouldn’t meet her outside.

Then, once they reached the door to Ken’s quarters, the sage let him inside and told him to make himself comfortable while he called for Wolfram that was in the next room, waiting for him to come back; so Yuuri nodded in reply and did as he was told, patiently waiting for his friend to come back with the blond.

-&-

When Ken entered in his bedroom he found his fiancé, who greeted him with a grave expression on his face, sat on the trunk at the feet of the bed, his legs crossed and giving a glimpse of his nudity underneath the housecoat he was wearing.

“Why did you come back with Yuuri? What happened?”, the blond demon asked, concerned by the look on his lover’s face when he had opened the door.

“I’m sorry… I had promised you to take care of---”, Ken started but Wolfram shushed him.

“Don’t be stupid! I don’t care about this. Just tell me what went wrong since you left for you to have such a long face and to bring Yuuri of all people back with you.”, he cut short and Ken slowly breathed in and out a couple of times before replying, buying himself time to find a proper answer to his lover’s question, because he actually felt ashamed for what had happened in Flynn’s office and for his previous thoughts and doubts about himself and Wolfram and everything else.

“I’m going to tell him what I told you the night of your birthday and what I told Yozak on the ship.”, he declared at last and Wolfram’s eyes widened at that and he studied him in silence for a long instant.

“He actually deserves to know, but just answer to that: why _now_?”, Wolfram asked back and Ken scoffed, more at himself than at him in truth.

“He took me off-guard, actually, and part of that just slipped my tongue”, he confessed and Wolfram frowned at him.

“It’s not like you”, his lover retorted and Ken exhaled again, smiling at him but without the usual mirth of his smiles reserved to him.

“Sadly, I’m pretty aware of it…”, he replied still with the same smile drawn on his face, and Wolfram frowned at him again and studied him for a while longer, until he just shook his head and heaved a sigh and, without any previous notice or another word, then he suddenly just squeezed his fiancé’s face into his hands and smashed his lips against his lover’s ones in a fierce peck that lasted more than a minute, as if he wanted to make of it a point of his moral support that he was ready to offer to him anytime.

And actually that mere kiss that was all but sensual had the power of melting away _all_ the doubts that had hunted the sage for the last minutes until a moment before.

Ken scoffed at the irony of that, because Wolfram actually proved to be both the cause and the solution to all of his problems.

To that, Wolfram stared at him, his green orbs fixed in that pitch black eyes of his lover, serious and stern.

“I’m here”, he reinforced the concept behind his kiss and glance, but Ken, in the end, diverted his eyes and heaved a sigh that sounded resigned and sad… and maybe disarmed.

“Are you doubting me?!”, the demon accused him at that response he received, reading skepticism in that gesture, but Ken only exhaled again, sadly smiling at his lover.

“You’re not the one I doubt”, Ken confessed after a long silence, but what he didn’t expect was his fiancé’s hand falling on his left cheek so hard that his face stayed swollen and pulsing for like an eternity.

“Don’t you dare”, Wolfram threatened, his eyes darting flames, and Ken, after a long instant of pure shock, started to laugh in hysterics.

“…ah, Wolfram…”, he sighed, defeated, but then he smiled ever so slightly in that mysterious way of his. “You’ll be the ruin of me one day or another… I just know it…”

“No: I’ll be your anchor to the present”, the blond retorted right back, serious, but then Ken’s smile became even more forced and false while it widened instead, and the main question formed itself again into his brain, weighting his heart: _‘And then what?’_

But not another word was shared between them after that and they finally moved to the next room, where Yuuri was patiently waiting for them and where Ken, at last, told him everything about Wolfram and how Shinou had manipulated all their destinies in the last six years, and also about Yuuri’s ‘heritage’ from the first king.

 

“So ‘the Maoh’ in me is Shinou’s soul?!”, the demon king asked, stunned by the sudden revelation, when Ken had finished his explanation.

“Part of it. It actually was the small part that still was untouched by the Soushu at the moment of the ritual, but, before you completely purified it, I believe that the separation wasn’t so neat as we thought it to be and that a very little part of it actually got corrupted too along the millennia.”, Murata replied.

“So I’m the reincarnation of Shinou?!”, Yuuri insisted, still appalled, but Ken slightly shook his head.

“Not completely, as I already told you, but in a way, yes, you are.”, he clarified. “The part of his soul sent back to the reincarnation cycle actually was too small and it was unstable, so we merged it with another soul.”

“Whose soul?!”

“Who cares by now?”, Ken retorted at that but Yuuri stubbornly persisted.

“Well, _I_ care, ok?!”

In front of Yuuri’s insistence, the sage exhaled soundly, but, in the end, he decided to answer to that too.

“…Shinou’s mother.”, he said at last and a long silence fell upon them at the declaration, both Yuuri and Wolfram staring at him in utter shock and both of them so clearly picturing their own mothers doing the same for them where it might be needed. “There was no reason for you to know about these details, by the way…”, Murata added and Yuuri heaved a sigh when he recovered enough from the ulterior shock of the last revelation.

“...maybe you are right”, he conceded in the end, “but I’m glad that you told me anyway.”

Then the sage smiled at him and sighed too.

“Well, now that you know everything, can you please leave us?”, Ken bluntly asked at last, but he was too tired to care about it, and he knew that Yuuri would have understood this time.

And in fact the demon king sheepishly smiled at him and rose from the sofa, his hand scratching the back of his head in a slight embarrassment.

“…then I’ll go…”, he replied and then, when he finally reached the door, before opening it and leave he turned towards the both of them and, slightly nodding at Ken in acknowledgment of his efforts for speaking to him about all that, he only uttered two brief words: “Thank you”.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you feel like it, please: leave me a comment about your thoughts, opinions, doubts on the story so far! I would appreciate them very much indeed! :)


	17. Wavering

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the waiting... this chapter was ready since almost a week but my boyfriend moved in a new house and I went to help him for a couple of weeks after he'd been another two weeks with no gas nor electricity, then a week with a broken fridge and still with no internet because the technician that had to come to bring the modem yesterday just didn't show up at all... now I'm back home and back to the 21st century, so I can finally post what I've written and share that with you!  
> I hope you'll enjoy this new chapter, where it finally starts to happen what I actually had in mind for this part of the story from the start XD

“What is it?”, Wolfram asked the moment the door closed behind Yuuri’s back, but Ken only smiled at him and replied it was nothing.

“Don’t lie to me. I hate it when you lie to me.”, Wolfram persisted, somewhat frightened, but this time too Ken only smiled.

“And don’t smile like that! Don’t you dare smile like that to me!!”, the panic rising at lightning speed, but Ken could do nothing about it and continued to smile in silence. A smile with no joy. A cold smile. A sad one.

Wolfram lost his breath and fell silent too.

They watched themselves in the eyes like that for a few minutes, until the sage broke the tense silence.

“Please, Wolfram: leave me alone. I’ll see you again tomorrow at breakf—” he started, but the blond shouted a “NO WAY!” that made that last word die in his throat.

“No way that I’m leaving you here alone with these thoughts in your convoluted mind! You’re stupid if you think I’ll listen to you in a moment like that, when you’re so unstable! You need me, now more than ever!”, Wolfram persisted and, at those words, Ken almost complied, but in the end he just stayed true to his first decision.

“Please, Wolfram… I really need to stay alone right now. Allow me. Please.”, he repeated, but his fiancé only swallowed hard and stayed where he was.

“Please.”, Ken repeated for the third time, his eyes locked with the green ones of his lover, firm, and this time Wolfram wavered in his resolution. But still…

“No…”, he replied, now more uncertain than just a moment earlier, but he didn’t divert his gaze from the sage’s, not even for an instant.

“Please, Wolfram… only for today. I promise it’ll be for today only, but leave me.”, and this time, even if with a heavy heart, Wolfram kissed him hard but, in the end, he nodded once.

“It’s a promise. And first thing tomorrow morning I’m coming here and we’ll go downstairs together and we’ll have breakfast with everybody else.”, the blond disposed, resolute, and after another kiss that was more a smashing of their heads, lips against lips, than a real kiss, he finally complied and left. And when the door closed behind his lover’s back, Ken left himself fall on the sofa again and closed his eyes shut, his thumb and middle finger massaging his temples in a start of a headache surely far stronger than the ones he had suffered in the last period.

-&-

When Wolfram, right before time for breakfast, announced himself to Ken with a quick knock on his door before entering, he found the parlor empty.

He called again and hastily reached the inner door – the one to his lover’s bedroom – thinking to find him still sleeping despite the hour, but that room was empty too, and so was the bathroom.

Hurt and angry, he shouted his fiancé’s name in frustration: he had told him that he would have come here to take him before breakfast, so where in the world had he dared go without telling him?!

In a frenzy he rushed out of the empty room and ran downstairs in search for him and, when he didn’t find him in the dining room with all the others he started to seriously worry.

“Wolfram… what is it?”, Yuuri asked when he noticed his face and hastened breath. Then he noticed he was alone and put two and two together.

“Did you see Ken this morning?”, he quickly queried, dissipating any doubt on that matter, clearly upset, but all of them only shook their heads at him.

He was going to leave and continue his research when he noticed that Ken wasn’t the only one missing.

“Where’s Yozak?”, he questioned, speaking now to the only one who could have known, but Conrad shrugged.

“This morning around five someone knocked at our door and then he went out and told me that he most likely would have missed breakfast. He said nothing more, but now I suppose he’s gone out with the sage… until a moment ago I thought it was about a commission of some sort… but it seems I was wrong.”, then he rose from his seat and excused himself. “I guess I’ll help my brother looking for them.”, he offered and Wolfram was going to refuse his help when Yuuri stepped in the conversation too.

“I’m coming with you!”, he proclaimed, but this time it was Conrad who refrained him from joining them.

“There’s nothing to worry for sure. Maybe they’re just in the gardens to have a chat.”

“But…”, the Maoh persisted, feeling guilty after the previous evening’s conversation they had in Murata’s rooms and remembering his friend’s strange behavior back in Flynn’s office.

“Stay assured we’ll find them and I’m sure that we’re just worrying for nothing. There’s no need for any of you to ruin your breakfast, the most important meal of the entire day!”, Conrad smiled at all them and then hinted at his brother to follow him outside, his expression changing the moment he had turned from the others.

“What is it?”, Wolfram asked him grave when they got sufficiently distant from prying ears.

“Did you get in a fight yesterday?”, Conrad blatantly asked back and Wolfram frowned at him, not exactly willing to talk with him about it.

“Why are you asking?”, the blond retorted and his brother rolled his eyes and sighed.

“Actually, it seems that it’s the _second_ time that the sage had come to look for Yozak after a fight with you. That’s why I’m asking.”, he cut short, because he was a patient man by nature, but even his patience had a limit, and he had actually reached his own.

Wolfram was dismayed by the news and, abruptly stopping while they were walking apparently out of the mansion, he turned to watch at him with wide eyes.

“It wasn’t properly a fight… that’s why I’m worried”, he confessed at last and these words caught all his brother’s attention at once.

“What happened then?”, Conrad pried further and, after a brief moment of reticence, in the end Wolfram redirected their steps to the gardens and, sitting on a stone bench next to a bush of red roses, he told him about their conversation with Yuuri in the sage’s room the previous evening.

“I see…”, the older man commented at last, trying to hide his own disconcertment about all that he had heard when Wolfram had finished his not so short recap about it.

“By the way, you said it wasn’t the first time…”, Wolfram went on after a pause and Conrad shook his head.

“No, it’s not. The first time was the evening before you made up after your attempted annulment of your engagement with him.”, his brother replied and, recalling that night when evidently Ken had just come back from a drink session with the spy, Wolfram suddenly flushed and diverted his gaze from Conrad’s.

After a small eternity, Wolfram broke the silence that had fallen upon them after that.

“Should I go look for him?”, he asked his brother still not watching at him in the eye and Conrad finally smiled, happy to see that his little brother was relying on him again after so long.

“Maybe you should wait and give him some time. I suppose that, for some things, living such a long time can be a curse more than actually being a blessing…”, he commented and Wolfram sighed, frustrated but understanding what his brother meant, because, in small ways, as mazoku and half mazoku, even if they were still young for their kind, they already experimented what it meant to live a very long life already, for example, compared to the humans, and, in that time they had until then, they already had far more than a single chance to discover how that could be detrimental for their minds. And certainly living for more than _four millennia_ could only be worse.

Then Wolfram fidgeted before collecting enough courage for his next question.

“Do you think he’ll come back to me?” and, to that, Conrad gently smiled at his dear younger brother and curled an arm around Wolfram’s shoulders in a reassuring gesture.

“I’m sure everything’s going to turn out just fine in the end, so try to have patience and give him a little more time to adjust. Have faith in him and in the love you share, ok?”, the older one replied and Wolfram sighed again but then nodded and finally stood up from the stone bench.

“I’m retiring to my quarters. Tell the others that I will eventually join you all for lunch.”, the blond stated keeping his composure “Oh, and please tell Yuuri that there’s no need for him to worry about me or Ken and that we’ll be just fine.”, he concluded and then, with a nod to his brother that the other returned, he finally left.

-&-

When Yozak came back at last around four p.m., Conrad didn’t expect him to come back together with the sage in his toe.

“Geika!”, the brunet exclaimed, taken aback and momentarily unable to hide his stupor.

“Sir Weller”, he replied in kind and then closed the door of the parlor behind his back. “I hope you won’t mind if I take a seat…”, he suggested and the other, still slightly on the defensive, waved at the armchair in front of his seat. “Actually, it’s already a few days that I wanted to have a small chat with you, but it happened so much that only now I finally find the time and the chance to come see you.”, the sage went on and Conrad could only frown at him at the sudden declaration, not sure about the topic of their conversation, because it really happened a lot in the last few days and weeks.

After a moment he took to study him and his husband who was there with them on the sofa next to him, Conrad nodded at him to continue.

“For once I won’t beat around the bush”, Ken started, breaking the heavy silence that had fallen. “During our next meeting, I’d like to recommend your name for the role of king of Dai Shimaron now that Belar IV is dead.”, he bluntly declared and Conrad visibly flinched at the suggestion.

He fell silent for a few minutes and turned towards his husband, who only silently watched back at him, supportive but unwilling to intrude on that important decision, and Ken respected his need to recover from the shock of his proposal that he knew that actually sounded more like an order than a suggestion.

“We had a similar conversation once, back in Dai Shimaron, so you should already know my answer.”, Conrad replied at last, kind but cold, and Ken heaved a sigh.

“The present circumstances are different than what they were at the time. Belar IV was a perfect puppet and it was a pity that, when we retired from Dai Shimaron after succeeding on putting him back on his throne, Belar II’s supporters were able to put the last one back at his previous place and to make him usurp his nephew’s throne once more.”, the sage commented. “So now the perfect candidate for another putsch with the League supporting him is dead and now there’s no better candidate for that place than the rightful heir of Shimaron’s royal lineage.”

“My place is in Shin Makoku, at the Maoh’s service.”, Conrad retorted, but the sage smiled at him.

“I agree on that second part too.”, he replied and the ex-prince frowned.

“I chose to live as a mazoku and I swore my complete loyalty to the Maoh, to the mazoku race and to Shin Makoku when I came of age.”, the brunet repeated, fired up, and, at that, Murata’s eyes became so piercing that Conrad flinched after a short while he had tried to actually sustain his gaze and failed.

“You know as much as I do that yours is a little sweet story that you’re telling to yourself for years now so to avoid your responsibilities as a leader and so to remain next to Yuuri.”, Ken retorted and this time both Conrad and Yozak stiffened. “I’d like to remind you that last time you had feigned yourself dead to your Maoh and your family and, when by pure chance we found you, you feigned to be a traitor so to save your credibility in front of Belar II and Belar IV and so to manipulate the last one for your Maoh’s and Shin Makoku’s sake, risking your position next to Yuuri if he hadn’t believed in you at the time, before you finally explained your behavior. And actually _that time_ ”, he pinpointed deliberately harshly, “if it wasn’t for your brother’s blind faith in you, you also actually risked to _break_ your dear Maoh, whose heart was already shattered since the moment he had thought you dead.”, he explained in a flat and a bit cruel tone, untactful and unmerciful, and Conrad had to divert his eyes at that, feeling guilty.

“Now”, the sage went on, “You understand that your last statement is void of meaning in the acceptation that you are attempting to give to it, don’t you?”

Conrad swallowed hard and Yozak finally took his husband’s hand in his and squeezed it in support, and both of them thought that the great sage could be _frightening_ when he wanted to be it, and a first class manipulator, maybe as dangerous as Saralegui had showed them to be in the past.

When Murata finally saw fear in the others’ eyes, he smiled at them, cryptic but broadly, trying to put them back at ease, but that, if possible, startled them more instead of calming them down. So he chuckled at their funny faces.

“Now, now”, he sighed, slightly amused by the reaction coming from two grown men and soldiers nonetheless. “You know that there’s no other way for our mission to succeed, don’t you? And you know that the only other option available is to unite back the Shimaron in a single nation under one king… and you know who’ll be extremely willing to take the trouble to do so under his name, with the future problem of what will happen after his death. Shimaron is too big, strong and influent to be back as it was four thousand years ago.”, he commented and this time three distinct sighs followed.

They knew that the sage was right, but still, it was too sudden for Conrad to decide right away: all his life would have changed completely, and he had never wanted to be king in the first place.

“I’m a half-blood: humans will never accept me, and surely not after Belar II and his predecessor’s politics of the last few centuries. Certainly not in the actual political situation.”

“I never said that it would have been easy”, Ken retorted, “But you are still our best option and you know it. You’re the true heir on the throne of Shimaron, and your Maoh will fight next to you to make that future possible, you can count on it.”, the sage persisted and, at last, Conrad heaved a resigned sigh.

“I promise that I’ll think about it.”, he bitterly replied at last and, to that, Murata finally stood up and, with a brief nod, he walked to the door.

“I’m calling a meeting for the day after tomorrow after breakfast: I expect you to have made up your mind for then.”, he stated and then left before Conrad could tell him – or even remember to tell him – about Wolfram, now weighted by that new and definitely heavy burden.

But maybe to be taken aback by that was only his fault because, given the last predicaments, he might have been already thinking that it was going to come…

By the way, that didn’t mean that he would have had to like it…

So, when the door closed behind the sage’s back and Yozak asked him what he was going to do about it, Conrad only heaved a sigh and sank deeper in the sofa, his head now on his husband’s shoulder as support.

“Not that I have much of a choice, it seems…”, he replied in a half resigned, half annoyed tone, and Yozak could only kiss him better… not that it worked very well, sadly, but it was still better than nothing. “Will you stay by my side there?”, he asked him then, his eyes still closed and his voice still slightly wavering and Yozak scoffed at him as if he had just finished to insult him with that question.

“You sure understand nothing about me if you had actually felt the need to ask me that, Conrad…”, the red-head sighed but then, at his husband’s troubled face at his words, he smiled reassuringly at him. “ _Obviously_ , you silly!”, he concluded and then kissed him back again, closing like that that thorny topic once and for all – or, at least, until the day after tomorrow when that option would have been put to vote.

-&-

It was half past five when Ken went finally back to his rooms and it startled him to find not only one but _two_ letters on the floor passed under his door, both of them without any note on the envelope.

So he chose one and opened it, that one being Wolfram’s.

It wasn’t long, and it also was extremely sweet all considered, sure as he had been to have pissed him off when he hadn’t been in his rooms that morning as promised.

So he couldn’t not gently smile at it before putting it on his desk so to free his hands to check the second one.

And when he opened it, he had to admit that that last note had taken him aback.

 

_I’ll wait for you tonight at ten._

_Be punctual and don’t tell anyone._

_S._

 

Now, that was strange…

Wasn’t Saralegui after Wolfram more than he was after him? And didn’t he already have his brother?

What had he in mind for calling for him alone to his quarters at night?

 

At first, when he had come back and after reading Wolfram’s letter, the sage had decided not to show at dinner and to have it in his room instead, wanting to gain some more time to think alone without any interferences, but Saralegui’s note had really taken him aback and distracted him from his original intent, so he might as well have gone downstairs to have dinner with everybody and, maybe, also take the opportunity to thank Wolfram for his patience and ask him a little more time so that he could go see Saralegui that night without any interferences, as the Shou Shimaron’s king had actually asked him for his discretion.

And so he did, and everything at dinner went smoothly, even more smoothly than he would have imagined at first, and so much that, when came the time to retire, Ken decided to kiss Wolfram goodnight before entering his rooms so to reassure him at least a little until the next day, when he had already planned to definitely find the time and the guts to talk with him about himself and his doubts… because he wanted to stay with Wolfram, to keep their relationship safe at all costs, but for that he knew that first he had to tell him what refrained and troubled him: there was no other way.

 

But first: Saralegui.

 

He couldn’t deny his curiosity about that note the man had left him under his door, and he actually had conflicting feelings about it.

Nonetheless at ten he was out of Sara’s door, which opened mere seconds after his knocking, as if the blond was already behind it, waiting for him, when he had gotten there.

“So quick!”, Ken greeted him with a grin, slightly startled – he had to admit to himself – by the other’s readiness to open the door totally in contrast with the other time, and, for once, Sara didn’t reply with one of his many witty remarks everybody was already so used to actually expect from him at any occasion.

Ken frowned at that, befuddled, but at the blond’s gesture to enter he complied in silence and followed.

What, by the way, shocked him the most was noticing that, while guiding him from a few steps ahead from him to the living in his parlor, Saralegui seemed slightly _fidgeting_.

So he followed in silence and took a seat on the armchair that Sara had showed him. Then he waited, and a few minutes passed like that, the two of them studying each other in a deafening silence before the young king decided to finally speak.

“Does anyone know that you were coming here tonight?”, the blond asked, hazel eyes in pitch black ones, and Ken raised an eyebrow at him.

“You asked me not to tell anyone, did you not?”, he replied with a scoff and, strangely enough, Saralegui diverted his eyes at that and Ken could notice that his chest was moving up and down faster than normal.

“Why did you ask me to come here?”, the sage queried him, his inner curiosity growing every second in front of such an unexpected reaction, and Saralegui swallowed and for an eternal moment he kept silent, as if unable to find the right words to start.

_Odd. Really odd…_

The minutes passed then and Sara still hadn’t said a word, but Ken knew that insisting would have only been worse, so he continued to patiently wait while his interest grew more and more instead.

Suddenly he heard Sara take a deeper breath than the previous ones and slowly and soundly exhale and he knew that he had finally found the courage to spit out whatever he had called him there for.

And in fact…

“I want you to tie me up.”, he bluntly stated at last and Ken had to admit once again that he didn’t see it coming at all.

A tense silence followed and Ken noticed Saralegui’s hands shaking despite his attempt to keep them at bay while holding them together in a tight grasp in his lap.

He was serious, so Ken decided to be serious too.

“Why?”, the double black asked him back and Sara clenched his teeth, not waiting for such a blunt question all of a sudden.

“No reason”, he gasped in self-defense, but his heartbeat, together with his breath, visibly hastened out of the blue, sign that it wasn’t the truth.

But if he wanted to be tied up, he had to submit.

Totally.

Ken needed no words to make him understand that his reply wasn’t satisfying at all and Sara, who had always been the one in his place, the one in control, knew it too.

But knowing it happened to be not enough for him to totally accept it and finally comply with it… his willpower was too strong to be submitted this easily!

But that was the game, and the both of them knew it…

Sara clenched his teeth again and his nails sank in the flesh of his fingers.

Neither of them was the brutal one when it came to bondage: first you start crushing the mind and then you make your partner take pleasure at last in the restriction of the ropes… that was how they both did it and Sara had showed to be this kind of S and knew by instinct that Ken was the same as him with no need for asking.

Sara could feel his heart hammering in his chest and ringing in his ears, but still his throat was dry and no word seemed to want to come out of it.

But Ken had no rush and just waited for him to be ready.

And he had to wait a lot, but in the end Sara spoke.

“You made me curious”, he confessed and Ken frowned ever so slightly at the remark. So he kept silent and that made the blond king eventually continue. “Yelshi always struggles when I tie him up”, he started to explain, “and I always have to sooth him with words and promises and, more often than not, even menaces to make him submit to me, but you were willing…”

“It’s refreshing to leave control to someone else once in a while, and I had faith in you and your skills, that’s why.”, Ken frankly replied, and this time it was Sara’s turn to frown at him.

“You left control to me, but I know that you don’t really trust me… so how can you affirm that you had faith in me?”

“I don’t trust you _politically_ ”, he specified. “You’re ambitious and unmerciful, and when you get bored you can become extremely dangerous, but my instinct tells me that, for some reason, you would never hurt me nor Wolfram, and I understand that it’s odd at the very least given that you already put all our lives in danger so many times and in so many ways since the first time we had met you.”, he confessed, and after his words they passed a few minutes just studying each another until Ken stood up and extended a hand at him, his eyes locked with Sara’s while waiting for him to take it.

Because that last answer was enough for a start for the part that concerned him…

And Saralegui kept his breath but finally reached the sage’s hand, so Ken guided the king to his own bedroom where he found everything that he could have needed perfectly organized over the linens.

When the door then locked behind them, the blond hesitantly started to strip, but the sage stopped him.

“No need for you to get naked.”, he stated assertive, and Sara watched at him funnily, thing that made Ken chuckle slightly and Sara turn peculiarly pink in response.

“You never left control to another nor lowered all your defenses and shields before, neither for a short while”, the sage explained. “One step at a time. But rest assured that, when I’ll finish, you will feel refreshed. That’s a promise, so trust me.”, his voice soothing and caressing but also firm and steady, and Sara’s instinct told him that he could trust his words even if his mind still was reticent to accept to leave the lead to another.

Noticing that, Ken gently caressed his cheek while looking at him in the eye, reassuring and calm. Then he turned, took one of the long ropes ready on the bed, untied it and extended it to the blond.

“Here”, he soothed, “feel it in your hands”.

Hesitantly, Sara did as he was told, but his hands were slightly shaking once again while doing so and Ken noticed.

He watched the blond take familiarity with the rope for the first time as the one who was going to be tied up instead of the one who tied up and then slowly removed his own neckerchief, gesture that quickly alarmed the other man who promptly asked him what he needed it for.

“I’m going to blind you so that you can concentrate more on the sensations and so that you won’t be distracted from your main task.”, the sage patiently explained.

“Which is?”, Sara asked, now back on the defensive, and this time Ken scoffed at him.

“Well, I guess you have to listen to it at least once to start to accept it, don’t you?”, he said, more to himself than to the other, and, at those words, Sara flinched, regretting to have asked. “You have to completely surrender to me. To totally submit… you have to trust your life in my hands, and I’m going to start from stealing your sight from you.”, he declared with a straight face and a steady voice, and Sara’s breath died in his throat while his heart lost a beat. “You’ll see”, then Ken continued, his voice now a soothing caress again, “the moment you’ll accept to have given it to me, everything will get easier and you’ll start to even enjoy it, I promise.”

That seemed to calm Sara down enough to allow him to blind him with the silken cloth in his hands.

By the way, his muscles were still pretty tense.

“Relax…”, he whispered in the king’s ear and Sara flinched hard in response. “Relax, Sara.”, and for the first time he called him not just by his name, but by his sobriquet that only Yelshi – and Yuuri because he was Yuuri… – used. “You have nothing to fear: I’m here and, like you, I know what I’m doing. You can trust me and trust my skills. I won’t hurt you: I just want you to relax and enjoy this little breather, your little whim to be momentarily free from any responsibility. And you’re a king: your shoulders might be pretty burdened by them, don’t they?”

For a moment Saralegui tensed more, but then, very slowly, he started to loosen up ever so slightly.

“Good”, Ken praised him. “And now, can you pass me the rope in your hands, please?”

Again the blond tensed at the request and again he relaxed the instant later, but his hands were slightly trembling when he finally extended the rope in front of him, blindly waiting for the other to take it.

But Ken waited on purpose, and Sara started to get restless, his hands starting to shake harder while he remained for almost a minute with his arms up and his hands open with the rope on his palms, waiting and waiting for apparently no reason.

“Take it!”, the king ordered at last, but Ken ignored him.

“I said to take it!!”, Sara insisted after another moment when he sensed no movement around him. Then he heard a swiftly sound of clothes next to him and an instant later a hot breath on his neck.

“I’m not going to take orders from you, Sara, but you, instead, will do everything I say and indulge on my every whim.”, he declared and the blind man standing in the middle of the room stiffened but didn’t reply.

“Good”, Ken went on. “So, now that you seem to have understood”, and with those words he finally took the rope from his hands, “you can remove your vest and shirt”.

“But you said that I could keep my clothes on!”, Sara protested on a whim but then, as if realizing only then his mistake, he closed his mouth shut and, even if reluctantly, he did as he was told and let the pieces of clothes fall on the floor, peculiarly more embarrassed now with just his top off than when he had been totally naked, aroused and literally a moaning mess while Wolfram had him in front of the sage and his brother in that same room.

“You’re being obedient, Sara”, Ken soothed him with a smile that the other couldn’t see, but that he actually sensed from the sound of his voice. “So, before starting with the real thing, I guess you deserve a reward for your hard work…”, he suggested and slowly approached him, his hot breath getting nearer and nearer until Sara felt a couple of burning and soft lips cover his own.

He slightly disclosed them to allow the other’s tongue in, finally abandoning himself to the pleasure while leaving total control to the man in front of him, but abruptly a sharp pain that almost made him faint and that gave him the impression that someone just wanted to split his head in half hit him and a scream that mixed with another loud noise of which, in his state of mind, he couldn’t grasp its origin, filled the room.

Then, frightened like he’d only been once in his entire life – that time when he almost died – he removed the piece of cloth covering his eyes and gasped in front of what he saw: the sage laying on the ground and unconscious.

Panicked, he checked his breath and pulse and then heaved a relieved sigh and closed his eyes for a moment when he ascertained that he breathed, but then someone knocked at the main door to his quarters, evidently alarmed by the previous scream.

“Sara!! Sara, what happened!!”, the blond heard his brother call and for a moment he thanked that the door to his bedroom was locked when he heard sounds of steps coming inside… and they weren’t just Yelshi’s steps, as other voices confirmed just a moment later.

Luckily for him he was a quick thinker and so, in a calculating rush, he grabbed all the ropes and the other stuff on the bed and hid them in his closet because if he had put them under his bed, while checking on the sage someone might have seen them. Then he quickly dressed back and only after that he finally opened the door, maybe just a couple of seconds before Yozak smashed it down to enter.

And in that precise moment, when the door opened disclosing what it hid behind, another yell, this time coming from Wolfram, filled the room.

“KEN!”


	18. Two Bodies One Soul

“What in the world did it happen, Saralegui!!”

A moment earlier Wolfram was on his knees, checking on Ken and fretting over him, and right after that, before anyone could even notice, he was at Saralegui’s throat, a deadly flame in his eyes if not out of his palms.

“What did you do to him? And what was he doing here? Why were you alone, locked in your bedroom?!”

Basically everybody’s questions about that peculiar circumstance in which they found them into…

“I did nothing, Wolfram! I swear, that’s not my fault! I did nothing!”, the king repeated, and a freaking out Saralegui was a first for all the people standing there at the moment, his own brother included, and, for that, it also happened to be reason enough to make the mazoku hesitate and even calm down enough to release him and wait for an explanation.

“My lord…”, Yozak suddenly stepped in addressing his husband’s brother like that out of habit from next to the sage where he had bent to check on his conditions, “I heard two distinct cries earlier… _together_ …”, he added, still confused by the strange clues about all that situation but feeling the need to point that out.

“Then what did it happen here?”, the blond persisted then, petulant, and this time Saralegui only shrugged and shook his head.

“Why don’t you calm down and start from the start, then, Sara?”, Yuuri intervened at that but, at the really reasonable suggestion that the Maoh actually made, the Shou Shimaron’s king stiffened even more than he already was instead of calming down.

“Speak. _NOW._ ”, Wolfram ordered him at his prolonged silence, grabbing him back by the collar, and this time the young king diverted his eyes from the green ones locked on his: it was just an instant, but it was enough not to pass unnoticed.

“I don’t know what happened.”, he declared with suddenly blank eyes and a flat tone then, but it was far from being enough an explanation in front of the Daikenja laying on the ground unconscious at a couple of steps from there.

“Do you think that I’ll believe you?!”, Wolfram retorted, out of his right mind by then, but this time it was Saralegui who silenced him for good, and the concern in his voice startled everybody there.

“Instead of staying here shouting at me for nothing, you should be doing something _for_ _him_! I really don’t know what in the world happened! And you above all should know that I would never hurt him!”

And he didn’t say ‘I had no interest in hurting him’, or ‘why should I have hurt him in the first place and in my own bedroom?’ or again ‘What could I ever gain from hurting him?’… he had said ‘and you _above all_ should know that I would _never_ hurt him’…

This, together with what happened the previous day in Flynn’s office, made Yuuri finally snap.

“ _That’s enough_. I deserve to know what the hell is going on here among the three of you!”, but even if Wolfram – and Yelshi on the back, hidden from the others’ gazes now focused on the two blonds in the middle of the scene – had the decency to blush, Sara looked back at the Maoh with a kind of a challenging glare that reminded him of Murata.

“And how’s that?”, the irreverent king retorted at that, “You deserve nothing of the sort, you know!”, and his peculiarly harsh reply actually silenced them all for a few seconds, until, this time, Yelshi stepped in the conversation startling the small gathering.

“I’ll convince my brother to see reasons and tell me what happened exactly while you all go out from here and take care of the Daikenja.”, he intervened, an order and not a request, his nature of a leader of a big empire finally showing up for the first time in front of them; but if Conrad actually stopped Yuuri from arguing over that decision just in time, no one refrained Wolfram from doing that on his stead.

“Ken is my fiancé!!”, he loudly complained in fact, but at that, before Wolfram could actually add anything else, Yelshi shushed him with a curt “You’ll stay too” that, for the tone and resolution in his voice, left everybody mute again; and while Flynn left on her own and Yozak followed with the sage in his arms, Conrad carried Yuuri away by force pushing him out by the shoulders and finally leaving the three of them alone.

-&-

“So… tell us what happened exactly.”, Yelshi grunted, harsh and peculiarly angry at his twin, and Sara, once again for that night, diverted his eyes from his interlocutor’s ones and he also avoided to cross Wolfram’s while doing so. But, peculiarly fidgeting at the insistent prying, in the end Sara caved in eventually after a pretty long while under the still appalled gaze of the demon who, after what he had witnessed the previous afternoon in that same room, had been definitely taken aback by the reversal of the situation now developing in front of his eyes.

“…we were kissing and then a sharp pain as if my head was splitting in half hit me and I almost fainted, and when I recovered enough I saw the sage laying on the ground senseless. That’s everything I know.”, he declared sulking and this time both Yelshi and Wolfram glared at him in reproach.

“And _why_ exactly should you two be kissing in the first place?”, and peculiarly it was Yelshi the one who voiced that question first.

To that, Sara stayed silent, the clear intent of not answering to that question written all over his face.

Meanwhile Wolfram, on his behalf, was definitely hurt, because why hadn’t Ken talked to him about it? And in a moment like that, when everything seemed so frail between them once again and for a pretty unclear reason, why did he feel the need to go ask Saralegui for comfort? Why didn’t he go see him instead?

Wolfram was lost in thought, filled with doubts and questions, when something neither he nor Sara actually saw coming happened: Yelshi slapped his brother out of the blue while murderingly glaring at him; but to the harsh gesture, not a single word was spoken after that and neither a verbal reproach from Yelshi other than the silent one showing into his golden eyes actually followed for a while.

And Sara lost his breath, his eyes wide open for the shock of the slap, but after a few seconds he went back to his normal high and mighty self and glared back at his brother.

“Are you calling into question my feelings for you?”, he queried, uncaring of Wolfram being there, his cheek still pulsing, but he tried to move his focus elsewhere while questioning his twin in the attempt to shift the main topic to something that didn’t concern the reasons behind that kiss.

A really hard task…

“You tell me. Should I?”, Yelshi, the perfect twin to his brother, retorted in a harsh tone and Sara frowned.

“I wasn’t going to cheat on you. Did you forget our last talk already? It was quick, Yelshi!”, Saralegui spat, offended, but the circumstances where all against him and he knew it.

“Then why the kiss? And why the locked door?”

Yelshi’s voice was cold, glacial… cutting.

Sara clenched his teeth: he really didn’t want to answer to that question…

He couldn’t.

“Why did you kiss!”, Yelshi repeated in a shout while Wolfram continued to watch at them arguing with very conflicted feelings about wanting or not to know the reason why.

“It was a greeting”, Sara stated at last, unable to find an enough convincing excuse other than this really leaking one, showing with that how much he really wasn’t used to have to justify his actions to others…

“Behind a locked door, and not just _a_ locked door, but _your bedroom_ door?!”, Yelshi retorted, now literally fuming, and, in front of that, at last Saralegui snapped, unable to stand a situation in which he was in evident disadvantage anymore.

“I said I wasn’t cheating, so just stop your questioning at once! You don’t need to know anything more than what I already told you, because that’s exactly what happened.”, but to that Wolfram finally stepped in the conversation and to his following question both Sara and Yelshi turned towards him and frowned at him in the same exact way, as if in a mirror.

“At least reply to my question: did he come to you looking for some comfort?”

“And why should he have done this?”, Saralegui asked back, perplexed. “And also, he’s not the kind of man who would humbly come and ask for anything of the sort, don’t you think?”

And Wolfram knew that it was true, and Saralegui’s reply sure had reassured him on that matter, but then the question remained: why was he there in the first place?

The more that conversation went on, the more the ground under Sara’s feet became slippery… he had to think fast, but his head still hurt, actually, and he was in a kind of wobbly state of mind since far before that all that mess started, so it was even harder than it already was, and he had to choose between his pride and Yelshi, because those two would have surely pried until he decided to finally speak.

Soon he regretted his last words he had said to Wolfram without thinking, because now he couldn’t just state that the sage had gone to see him because he wanted to be tied up again like the previous evening…

Then he had an idea… it wasn’t the best of the ideas, but still he could try with it…

“I asked him to come. I wanted to discuss with him about Dai Shimaron’s situation. I wanted to convince him to leave the role to unify the Shimaron back under my name for everybody’s sake.”

“If that was the case, then why were you locked in your bedroom? Were you attempting to seduce him?”, Yelshi readily retorted before Wolfram was able to even open his mouth, and sure that said enough of Yelshi’s anger at the moment given the demon’s renowned bad temper…

Sara frantically clutched at straws, but at this point he had no other choice if he wanted to still not tell them the real reason of Murata’s visit.

“…he said that his head was too full to evaluate all the possibilities at the moment and that he would have taken that into consideration tomorrow, so I offered him to empty his head tying him up like I did yesterday and he agreed, but, before we could even start, it happened what you already know. I wasn’t trying to cheat and he wasn’t either. He needed a breather and I offered him the chance to have one. I locked the door because I had to hide the ropes that I had already prepared before the kiss, that actually was just like a seal on an agreement between friends who help each other.”

Reasonable.

Very reasonable… and maybe too much for all that previous struggling to not tell them everything from the very start if it really was the truth…

And Sara noticed that this was what both the others were thinking.

“I didn’t want to tell you because I was sure that you would have misunderstood, as you actually did.”, he lied and even retorted, but actually he was used to lie, so, now that he had at last found a reasonable excuse for that matter, it had gotten easier for him to defend his made-up story and to deceive them. “For the both of us the bondage is an art”, he went on, every word growing surer of himself, “and not necessarily just a preliminary to what comes next, and for the sage it seems it is also a way to momentarily release his mind from the stress.”

Neither Yelshi nor Wolfram were convinced… something in their guts told them that it was just a clever lie, but in the end it sounded like a truth. As they had already thought: very reasonable indeed.

They had actually no reason not to believe him so, at last, they accepted his motives.

“What do you believe it happened? Do you remember anything peculiar other than the pain in your head?”, Yelshi asked at last, back to the main topic for which they were actually there from the start.

“I have no idea, but the pain was so sharp that I realized that I wasn’t the only one crying just when I found the sage laying on the floor at my feet when I recovered enough.”, Saralegui replied, now evidently more calm than a moment earlier, and it was another reason not to believe his previous explanation, but still: they really had no clear evidence of the contrary, so both Wolfram and Yelshi decided that, for now, it was better to just focus on a problem at a time, and the most important one now was actually to understand what had happened in that room that had made the Daikenja faint and not wake up right away like they would have expected from any senses loss caused by a sudden pain… “By the way…”, he went on, suddenly remembering just a fleeting image that he saw for less than an instant while kissing the sage and before the throbbing ache in his head. “it was just a short moment, but a man in a gaudy attire on a horse appeared as a flash in my mind… I was in a clearing in a forest, but behind the man there was a high stone protection wall, like the one of a city or a castle. Don’t ask me what it means!”, he stopped his brother from querying right in time, but at the description Wolfram fell silent and became pensive.

“What is it?”, Saralegui asked the demon, slightly surprised by the changing in his features at his last declaration, but Wolfram only asked him back if he remembered anything else.

“If there was anything else, don’t you believe that I would have already told you about it?”, Sara retorted at that, quite scathingly, but Wolfram was actually too stunned to care about the other’s tone at the moment.

“How was the man you saw again?”, the mazoku queried, and this time Sara snorted and crossed his arms over his chest.

“I already told you, didn’t I?”, he complained, but then he added a few details from earlier: “he was riding a white horse, he was blond, his hair the color of the sun… a bit like yours”, he tried to be more specific, “and he wore a dark red almost brown cape with a white fur neckline, and his other clothes under it seemed pretty rich too. And that’s all I remember.”, he stated as a matter of fact, but the more he went on in his description, the more Wolfram paled and seemed confused.

“…you saw Shinou… and it’s one of Ken’s memories.”

“How are you so sure that it’s a memory of his?”, this time it was Yelshi asking.

“Because I heard him describe that same scene once.”, was what Wolfram replied keeping vague, but that was an explanation exhaustive enough for the other two.

After that, they all fell silent for a few minutes, pondering, when Yelshi abruptly broke the heavy silence with what seemed a really stupid question: “The sage was a Soukoku in his first life, wasn’t he?”

Both looked at him with a raised eyebrow, but Wolfram nodded in assent at last.

“Does he still have any powers other than the one to amplify the king’s ones?”, Yelshi continued and Wolfram grew more perplexed by the nature of the Seisakoku’s Emperor’s questions every minute.

“Yes, but once he told me that he just regained the majority of his old powers since not so long ago…”, the demon replied and that affirmation seemed to catch the half-Shinzoku’s interest.

“Do you know exactly since when? Did he tell you?”

“…he said that he wasn’t sure, but he noticed after all the big mayhem in Dai Shimaron… but why are you asking all these questions all of a sudden?”, Wolfram pried, curious now by the interest that the young half-blooded emperor was showing on that matter, and his answer definitely shocked the other two: “I have a theory”, he said. “But before telling you, let me ascertain that it might be actually true… which powers are we talking about exactly?”, he continued in his investigation, totally ignoring the flabbergasted expression drawn all over the other two’s faces.

“The powers of the legend”, Wolfram finally stated after a couple of seconds he actually needed to recover, “he’s a Dragon of Destruction, and he possesses powers of destruction over physical objects and other’s Maryoku manifestations and over the defenses of the mind. Then he said that he has healing powers too. I’m not sure there’s anything else.”

Yelshi seemed to ponder on the last collected data for a while, but Saralegui started soon to get tired of not understanding what was going on.

“What are all these questions for, brother? Just tell us your theory and let’s validate it together and decide if it’s worth our attention or not. Three heads are better than just one, you know? And I’m pretty good in analyzing stuff, as you know very well…”, Sara complained, annoyed, but his point wasn’t stupid, and all three of them could actually see it.

“Sara, try to think to break that vase over there”, Yelshi suggested all of a sudden, and, to that, both his brother and Wolfram blinked at him in befuddlement.

“What?!”, they exclaimed in unison and Yelshi only repeated it in a flat but resolute tone.

Uncertain, his twin brother complied after almost another minute of shock.

And he actually succeeded…

“ _What’s the meaning of this?!_ ”, the subject of the experiment shouted at last, completely losing his composure for a moment and showing on his face his visceral fear of the potential implications of that fact… and his analytical mind actually provided him with far too many of them in just a few seconds of pondering before he was finally able to shut it to any other new – frightening – possibility.

“In the imperial library in Seisakoku there is a section concerning old experiments on souls and mix of races, some of them even antecedent Shin Makoku’s foundation.”, Yelshi started to explain. “If you share part of the Daikenja’s soul”, now he addressed his brother, “it actually should explain many things about your birth and about what happened earlier… and actually I can see the too many similarities between you two in your characters and aptitudes, which might be seen as odd if thought separately, but that becomes just normal if considered as two parts of the same entity.”

Still in utter shock, Sara seemed to be momentarily able to only shake his head in denial for a while, and Wolfram wasn’t much better than him, actually…

“…but if it really is the case”, Yelshi added at last with a very deep and troubled sigh, “in order to fix this we are in far bigger trouble than we would ever like to be… and we might need to go back to Seisakoku...”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi!  
> That story doesn't stop to amaze me in so many ways (not at all bad from the reader's pov but maddening from mine)...  
> I plan for things and think a plot and then much more happens in the middle, so I have to adapt and re-adapt on and on almost everything...
> 
> And suddenly, without me noticing, next chapter will be the last one for this third part, and where I thought and planned to have a forth part with a single setting, here there'll be two... because the last chapter title will be "The group splits up".  
> ...well... at least forth part would be less monotonous... XD
> 
> Btw: see you in the last chapter and then, maybe, in the forth part!


	19. The Group Splits Up

Gisela actually couldn’t choose a more perfect timing to arrive at Flynn’s mansion.

She was being shown inside through a hallway and her arrival was going to be announced to the head of the house when she caught a glimpse of a redhead she knew very well fretting around the corner with something – no… _someone_ – in his arms.

“Yozak! …Sir Weller!”, she called, and where the first one just nodded at her but continued to follow Lady Flynn, who was leading the way to the infirmary, the latter stopped and, with a quick nod at his husband and a gesture to Yuuri to follow the others, he walked towards the woman.

“Gisela, thank Shinou you’re here!”

“What happened? Was it the sage that Yozak was carrying?”, she asked alarmed and the captain curtly nodded, his expression grave.

“We don’t know what happened, actually… he was alone with King Saralegui in the latter’s bedroom behind a locked door, but the circumstances seems odd at best. We all heard a loud scream and came running to check, but Yozak affirms that he recognized _two_ voices screaming at the same time… it’s unclear what actually happened, but Saralegui Heika was acting a little strange and he peculiarly appeared concerned, and the Daikenja lost his senses and still lays unconscious…”, Conrad explained while heading to the infirmary together with Gunter’s adopted daughter.

-&-

The moment they entered the door where the sage had been lain down, Gisela switched to ‘doctor mode’ and started to boss everybody around.

“Heika, Lady Governor: please, wait outside. Yozak, you too: you’re showing too much concern to be useful in case of need. Sir Weller, you stay inside in case I’ll need some help, and Yozak and Heika too: make sure that no one comes inside to disturb me while I check on his conditions. You know who I mean.”, she added just to be sure she was understood, and Yozak briefly nodded and went out patting the Maoh’s shoulder who actually seemed ready to argue on Gisela’s decision about him being unable to help there and having to stay out of the way instead.

“…Sir Weller, you declared that a scream was heard…”, she asked after almost a quarter of hour that she utilized to check on the sage’s conditions and then, more specifically and just to make sure, the body for injuries – even caused by needles – and finding nothing.

“Yes… it was a loud and protracted one…”

She seemed to ponder over it for a while.

“We are in human lands, so I can’t use my powers, but still I can state that something seems off with the Daikenja… there’s pulse, but it’s low even if it’s stable… I don’t know how to explain this because it’s actually the first time that I see anything similar, but it’s as if something is _missing_ …”, she tried to explain, and it frustrated her the fact to be unable to be any more precise than that. She was a specialist, after all, and it was shameful for her not be able to be any more clear than that…

“Yelshi Heika is now with Wolfram, questioning Saralegui Heika about what happened exactly. I suppose that when they’re done with the details they’ll come here to report to us.”, Conrad proclaimed after another short and pondering silence that had fallen in the room once more.

“The detail that seems strange is that, if he screamed just out of pain or shock and fainted, by now he should be waking up already…”, Gisela commented and, to that, Conrad could only nod in agreement, because he was actually thinking the same for a while now.

With a deep sigh she moved to the door to report the – small – results of her examination to the others waiting outside, but the moment she opened the door she almost bumped in Wolfram with his arm still in midair and his fist clutched, clearly ready to knock.

“How is he?!”, the blond asked before the woman could say a word.

“He’s still unconscious and I actually can’t state when he’ll wake up. I would suggest to bring him back to Shin Makoku, where I’ll be able to examine his conditions further with my maryoku and eventually help him recover with that.”

“It won’t be of any use”, a voice stepped in and everybody turned towards Yelshi with more or less befuddled expressions painted on their faces that actually turned shocked at his next words – Wolfram and Saralegui included because neither of them expected the young half-Shinzoku to be able of such bluntness. “He lost his soul, or at least part of it, so he won’t wake up anymore unless we somehow restore it.”

“What do you mean by that?”, Yuuri asked, appalled, and Yelshi, keeping a calm worth of the king he was, flatly replied: “His soul might have been divided at some point and Saralegui has its other half so, out of pure bad luck, the two parts resonated and the soul clearly chose the body with more potential as its container.”

“What…”, Wolfram gasped.

_Why hadn’t he said that this clearly earlier when they were in Saralegui’s chambers?!_

He had said that it was bad, but to be it to such an extent… well…

“…you must be joking…”, Wolfram’s heart had momentarily stopped and he had turned white as a sheet, so much so that Conrad felt the need to pat him on the shoulder in moral support.

“Maybe we’ll be able to find a way to save him.”, Yelshi stated, cold, and then he turned towards his brother and added “…if Saralegui here agrees to be experimented on and, in the worst case scenario, even sacrifice his life while trying…”

And Yelshi was sure that Sara would have _never_ agreed on something so dangerous for his life. That’s why he was so calm and collected: he knew his brother.

Nevertheless, at his last remark, everybody’s eyes fixed on Sara, someone expectantly, someone else curiously and some others just resigned to a refusal.

By the way, what Yelshi actually didn’t expect to see on his twin’s face was _doubt_ …

“Are you really taking that into consideration?!”, his brother yelled out of the blue, startling everybody there after his show of perfect composure until just a moment earlier.

Without replying to Yelshi’s question, Sara only slightly bowed to the small gathering there and took his brother by his arm.

“We’re going to retire for tonight. Let me know if anything in the sage’s conditions changes.”, he only stated and he was going to leave that Wolfram grabbed him by his elbow.

“You’re going to save him, don’t you?”, he half begged, half shouted, but Saralegui just diverted his eyes from the Mazoku’s pleading ones and replied nothing. “Please, Sara! Tell me you’ll cooperate! _Please_!”, and his voice trembled, but Saralegui briefly freed himself from the other’s grip and turned his back at him.

Despite that, before leaving he murmured an ‘I’ll think about it’ that only Wolfram, Yozak and Yelshi were able to grasp.

-&-

When Conrad went to check on his little brother at the sage’s bedside that morning he found him sound asleep on a chair with his head resting on his arms and Murata’s hand in his.

He found the sight literally heartbreaking.

He closed his eyes for a moment and then he entered making no sound.

He watched him sleep for a long while before feeling the overwhelming urge to pass his fingers through his little brother’s blond tresses in the vain attempt to soothe his sorrow away… at least a slightly bit. So he decided to indulge on himself and that instant Yozak showed at the infirmary door, witnessing the scene.

“Let him sleep… he cried all night”

To the sudden intrusion, Conrad slightly jerked in surprise, embarrassed to be found in such a vulnerable moment. But when he registered that it was just Yozak the most part of his uneasiness disappeared.

Then he turned towards his brother once again and watched his face, this time.

Yozak was right… he could see the lines of dried tears along his cheek at view and still some small ones trapped in his long eyelashes.

Without a word he removed his own jacket and put it on his little brother’s shoulders before leaving and silently closing the door to the infirmary behind his back so to not disturb him, at least for a little while longer.

“Where have you been?”, Conrad asked his husband, referring to the previous night, and Yozak just shrugged.

“Around”

“Anything?”

“…maybe… I overheard the two kings brothers arguing for a while tonight… they shouted at each other for a couple of hours… Didn’t see it coming: I thought that Yelshi Heika was more docile than that, but I’m pretty sure that Saralegui will cooperate in the end… didn’t see it coming either, by the way: I thought he was more selfish and didn’t give a fuck about others than himself. Clearly I got it wrong… or he’s changed since the last time we had met him.”

“Do you think it’s true?”, Conrad asked all of a sudden and Yozak shrugged again.

“Yelshi Heika didn’t lie.”, he replied in a flat tone. “By the way, Conrad: what do you plan to do now? You know which were the sage’s plans for the mission in Dai Shimaron after Belar IV’s death and now, without him, we might have even less chances to succeed with anything different…”

“We still have Heika with us: he always finds a way”, the captain answered right back with his unwavering faith in Yuuri, and Yozak sighed.

“…yes… but he also always attracts troubles wherever he goes or whatever he does, as you also should know very well by now…”, his husband pointed out, and Conrad could do nothing but heave another sigh in response.

Their walk, after that, continued in silence until they reached the dining room where everybody except for Wolfram had already gathered to have breakfast.

They threw a glimpse around and noticed that every single face there showed sleep-deprived signs under their eyes and, in the twins’ case, even in the grayish color of their skin.

“Hey! Everybody just looks horrible this morning!”, Yozak exclaimed in a loud voice and a large auto-imposed smile, but almost everybody there glared at him in disapproval.

“Did you check on Wolfram? Is he coming?”, Yuuri only asked to the newcomers and Conrad replied with a slightly sad smile.

“He was sleeping. We will arrange something for him when he wakes up, if Lady Flynn will be so nice to allow that”, the soldier replied in kind and the woman tiredly nodded.

“On my behalf, I checked on the sage almost a couple of hours ago and nothing changed since yesterday night.”, Gisela intervened at that and then the room got silent again until, at the end of the meal, Conrad spoke, rising from his seat.

“If everybody agrees, I would like to call a meeting for after lunch to discuss our mission, the main reason we are all here.”, he stated. “I think that, after the last predicaments, we have a lot to discuss before finally leaving to pursue our mission.”, he said and when, after everybody else there, Yuuri nodded too, he slightly bowed and left, followed by his husband.

-&-

“Yesterday evening the sage came to see me in my quarters and asked me to lay claim on the throne that once was my ancestors’ ”, Conrad stated solemnly, “and after everything that happened, I decided to follow his advice, because it’s definitely the best chance we have to make the putsch work.”

At that declaration, Yuuri shadowed.

He didn’t like the idea of separating again from Conrad, even after what happened on the ship, because he had forgiven him already. But despite that, he could see why Murata had suggested it, and even the reason why he had moved behind his back…

He would have liked to argue, to openly disagree and, if necessary, to even forbid it, knowing that, as the Maoh, Conrad would have had to follow his orders… but he was no more a child, and he knew that, now that Belar IV was dead, Conrad was the best choice on the throne of Shimaron…

By the way, he didn’t need to openly complain on that matter, because someone else did it for him.

“How convenient!”, Saralegui snorted at that declaration, in fact, his left eyebrow raised and a skeptical expression so like the sage’s drawn on his face.

“Points of view, Your Highness”, Conrad retorted quite scathingly, “because I don’t like the idea to be king in the slightest.”

“And hypocrite!”, he commented in a scoff.

“You know? I find it impossible to believe that you and the sage share the same soul”, Conrad retorted to the insult and Saralegui clenched his teeth and, for a while, he replied nothing.

“Come on, come on, guys! We’re here to have a civil discussion among adult people, not certainly to insult one another! And Conrad, seriously: what’s gotten into you all of a sudden to reply like that to his provocations?”

“By the way, Sir Weller, if you’re so against becoming king of Shimaron, then just leave it to me: I would gladly take the burden on my shoulders in your stead.”, Saralegui pointed out at that, and this time it was Conrad’s turn to scoff at him.

“You know the risks if we unite it again: it’s too big a nation.”

At the man’s declaration, Saralegui’s expression changed all of a sudden, as if he had said exactly what he expected to listen from him.

“Then…”, the blond half-blooded king replied with a schemer’s smirk. “if unite it under a single flag is too dangerous and even the actual dimensions are troubling with the wrong king at its head, why not just splitting it in half? Like that, everyone will be happy: I’ll reign over a Nation worth of its name, and eventually I’ll gain access to the sea for my trade routes, and you’ll have less work… what about it? So, instead of Dai and Shou Shimaron, we might call them East and West.”, he suggested, and, even if the idea came from him and he certainly had proposed it for his own benefits only, it really wasn’t a bad idea at all, so they discussed it for a couple of hours, but in the end they accepted the suggestion, made exception of the fact that they would have divided it in more than just two parts, and that they would have given part of its border territories to Caloria, Francia and Svelera too.

But when everything about that was settled, the meeting was far from its end…

“What about Ken’s conditions?”, Wolfram asked all of a sudden and everybody fell silent again, and, to the blond’s question, all eyes turned from Wolfram to Saralegui for the second time already since that meeting had started.

“We may go back to Shin Makoku”, Gisela intervened then, “my father can do some research on that matter and Anissina can help to stabilize the sage’s conditions until we find a solution. Here in human land I can’t be of any help at all now and neither are anyone of us.”, but to that Yelshi stepped in.

“With all due respect”; he started, “I’m pretty sure that your libraries have few documentation about this kind of experiments on souls and mix of races.”, he declared, “where Seisakoku’s royal one has a big section on that topic.”

“Really?! Then you can go there while we go to Shimaron and complete our mission!”, Yuuri exclaimed to that, but Yelshi totally ignored him and continued.

“…but actually there might be a problem with you Mazoku…”, he hinted and everybody there looked at him with puzzled eyes… everybody but Wolfram, who only sighed and lowered his gaze, because he might be a soldier, but he was a scholar too and first Julia and then Lord von Christ had been his teachers… and evidently he was also the only one there who had studied the few tomes in the royal and in Gunter’s libraries about the Shinzoku race and the great empire of Seisakoku.

Everybody knew, in fact, that there was a barrier all around that nation’s borders that isolated it from the rest of the world, but it seemed that not either Gisela knew of the composition of that soil and of the spells over these lands…

“Saralegui, when was the last time you have been in Seisakoku?”, Wolfram asked out of the blue and the twins turned towards him at the same time, puzzled by the question even if for completely different reasons.

“Never after my mother sent me to the human lands.”, the one called into question replied in a flat tone. “It was always my brother who came to see me in Shou Shimaron. Why do you ask?”

“…actually it’s a legitimate question”, Yelshi intervened and his brother glanced at him as if he was an alien but just waited for him to explain himself. “No one of you here except for Lady Flynn and, _maybe_ , the half-Mazoku can actually set foot into Seisakoku Empire, and even the half-blood might be greatly affected by the influence of the elements there.”, he explained. “So, still if my brother is ready to risk his life”, he rubbed it in, “the only solution might be to momentarily move that section of the royal library to Blood Pledge Castle.”, he declared.

And once again all the eyes turned on Sara who, after a really annoyed snort, just flapped his heels and stomped to the door.

“Make all due arrangements, then. I’m tired now, so I’ll retire to my quarters.”, he finally declared without even turning and then left without another word.

-&-

“Captain!”

After dinner Gisela called for Sir Weller by the dining room door in a peculiarly reticent tone that startled the man and made him abruptly stop and turn to scrutinize her with a perplexed expression on his usually seraphic face.

“A word”, she only said in response to the other’s silent question, and so, after a nod Conrad gave Yozak, they left alone together.

“I’m not sure you already received voice of it since I believe, knowing my father and the general, that they might have decided to avoid to distract you from your mission, but Lord Voltaire, my father and Anissina actually are in an illicit relationship and, as if it wasn’t enough in itself already, Anissina is pregnant. They’re risking their positions in the council and, for that, your mother, together with the three of them, decided to convince the other members to vote for a change in the law on unions at the Maoh’s comeback.”, she explained in short all that had happened during their already almost two months of absence since their departure from Blood Pledge Castle, and Conrad widened his eyes in utter shock at the news, his words and even his breath lost for a few eternal seconds of astonishment.

“Well…”, the brunet scoffed at last, trying to collect himself again after the incredible revelation and wearing his usual kind smile back on. “…I guess it wasn’t very kind of him to avoid to mention it to me or Wolfram”, he started and then, at the thought of the crack trio, he suddenly burst out laughing and he actually needed a few moments to calm enough to be able to talk again. “…but I also guess that I’m the last one who can actually get angry at him for keeping such a secret to us”, he hinted, and this time Gisela watched at him with a raised eyebrow and an evident question all over her face.

“Yozak and I have been married for forty-one years now, actually…”, Conrad explained at last and to see such a shocked expression distort the always controlled woman’s features made him almost crack in another laugh in her face… and it wouldn’t have been very kind of him…

“WHAT?!”, she cried in fact over the threshold of shock at the sudden as much as unexpected counter-revelation, and, to tell the truth, she hadn’t been so stunned even at the news that Anissina was pregnant and that she didn’t know who the father was.

“…I believe that my brother and I are even, then”; the man joked, but then his expression sobered a bit before continuing, “…but who knows how Wolfram will take it, especially now after what happened to the sage… You know that he doesn’t take changes very well…”

“Should I tell him?”, Gisela asked then, slightly uncertain after all that had happened since her arrival the previous night, but Conrad just shook his head.

“I’ll tell him.”, he only replied and, taking his leave from the woman with a nod, that was exactly what he did, heading towards the infirmary where his brother had settled to stay for the night on a side bed next to his betrothed until their departure in four days.

 

So he softly knocked at the closed door of the infirmary and, coming from the other side, he heard a loud screech of a chair sliding behind and Wolfram jumping on his feet; then he waited five seconds before opening the door after his brother had answered and, despite that, when he opened it and butted his head in to check the situation, he found him with red and still wet eyes trying to dry his cheeks with his sleeves and clearly failing.

And really, that view shook Conrad more than he would have liked to ever admit to even himself, because never in his long life he had seen his brother so devastated and vulnerable… not even when he had known of his father’s death.

“What is it, Conrad?”, the blond queried, feigning indifference and blatantly failing at it.

“I know that it’s not a good moment for you”, Conrad started then, “but I believe that you deserve to know this, especially since you’re leaving heading back to Shin Makoku in four days from now”.

Then the taller man took a brief pause before answering to the perplexed expression now drawn on his little brother’s face.

“…I just received that news from Gisela a couple of minutes ago”, he started, “and it seems that our brother is in a relationship with Gunter _and_ Anissina, and that Anissina is pregnant.”

To that, Wolfram’s eyes widened in utter shock.

“ _But it’s illegal!_ ”, he shouted, slightly panicking for the consequences of that scandal for all three of them and, most likely, for them too (and Gisela and Densham at the very least) as relatives of them.

“…I know”, he sighed. “But it also seems that our mother, together with them, is working to change that law. But I don’t know any more details about that story… and I guess that you’ll apprehend more when you’ll be back to Blood Pledge Castle.”, he concluded and then a long, heavy silence followed between them until Wolfram suddenly broke it.

“……we really are our mother’s sons…”, Wolfram commented then with a sigh on his behalf, and this time, to that, they both abruptly burst out laughing, maybe more in hysterics than for anything else.

-&-

The next three days passed in preparation for the departure towards three different directions: in fact, Yuuri would have headed towards Dai Shimaron with Conrad and Yozak; Gisela, despite her insistence to follow the Maoh’s expedition, had been ordered to go back to Shin Makoku with Wolfram, Saralegui and the unconscious sage; and Yelshi, together with his guard, would have gone back to Seisakoku’s Capital, Mitria, to collect all the tomes which could be of any use for saving the Daikenja and separate back his soul from his brother’s one and then he would have joined his twin and Lord von Bielefeld at the Maoh’s Castle.

The evening of the third day of preparations, then – the one before their respective departures – not long after dinner, Yuuri finally took the courage to knock at the head of the house’s private chambers.

The sun was setting outside the window, and the sky was quickly darkening, but still an orange light washed the lady’s parlor and the pages of the book that she was reading on the sofa under the window.

“Yes?”, she asked, startled to receive a visit in her private quarters. Because she could tell by the knock that it wasn’t her butler who was waiting outside at the moment.

A brightly blushing Yuuri opened the door, entered, and then closed it again behind his back, but the embarrassment evidently wasn’t enough to keep him from turning the key in the keyhole before approaching the woman inside.

When Flynn heard the click of her door, then, she flushed too like a young girl at her first time alone with a man in spite of her being already been married and widow despite her still relatively young age.

Yuuri approached slowly and, on her behalf, she found herself completely frozen in the spot, her eyes locked with every movement of the young man getting nearer and nearer every passing second; and when the Maoh finally reached her and, bending over her, he stole her a gentle but needy kiss, she found herself even more stuck than that time in the gardens when he had kissed her for the first time.

…because it was clear what would have happened there in the next hours: she had already been in love and then married with Norman, and they actually didn’t arrive chaste at their marriage, but it had been so long since the last time that she had shared a bed with someone!

So she panicked all of a sudden, and the reaction startled Yuuri, who abruptly stopped kissing her and slightly moved in order to watch her better in the eyes., a silent question drawn on his face together with a doubt.

“…don’t you want to?”, Yuuri timidly asked then, uncertain and, for a moment, fearing to have read more than what there was in their past weeks’ flirting and kissing… especially since it actually was his first time and, despite his many conversations about girls and women and love relationships in general with Murata in the last six years, he had no direct experience on the matter.

But then Flynn emphatically shook her head and then fiercely nodded the moment later and she quickly reassured him.

“Oh yes! Yes, I want to!”, she shouted in fact and, seeing her so flustered actually flattered Yuuri and gave him back his confidence, that showed in the kiss that followed, which literally stole her breath away.

“…then how about moving to a place slightly more comfortable than this sofa?”, he boldly suggested, remembering what Ken had told him once about women’s natural disposition to favor, most of the times, a male partner who took the initiative to a more complaisant one. And Flynn wasn’t any different than the most part of women so, turning an eliciting pink on her cheeks and tip of her ears, she diverted her eyes but, at the same time, she stood up and, taken Yuuri’s hand in hers, she guided him into her bedroom an closed that door too behind them.

They kissed again, and then Yuuri started to undress his partner, and Flynn just let him work on her clothes without any complaint until she found herself completely naked in front of a still fully dressed Maoh.

With half reticence and half respect for her, then, Yuuri finally reached for the woman’s breasts, first with the tip of his fingers, then with all his fingers and finally with his palms too, feeling under his hands her nipples hardening quite fast.

Then he squeezed and massaged her bosom for a long while, as if hypnotized by her tits, his eyes fixed there and strangely unable to move elsewhere since the moment that he had set his gaze over those two perfect and soft fruits of pleasure.

And she melted under his touch, kind and eager at the same time.

And when he suddenly took a nipple into his mouth and started to suck and nip at it with his teeth, she gasped in pleasure and sensed her lower part getting wet and ready.

It was a maddening torture for her that all Yuuri’s attention seemed gathered over her breasts, but, at the same time, the waiting excited her even more. So she refrained her hands from searching for her younger partner’s clothes to remove them and waited a bit longer for Yuuri to explore her and, eventually, to make her his.

 

And when the next morning they woke up together in her bed, in one other’s arms, the first thing she saw was Yuuri’s smile.

“ ‘morning”, he mumbled at her, still sleepy, and she didn’t reply but, in a sudden impulse, she softly kissed him on the lips.

“I guess I have to go, now…”, Yuuri half smiled again, this time slightly embarrassed and clearly unwilling to move from her side, and he rubbed the back of his head.”We’ll leave in a couple of hours, after all…”, he justified himself, but she knew, and he had nothing to justify for; so she only nodded and kissed him again, this time deeper and harder and, despite his previous words, they ended up going for another round under the sheets… after all he was a healthy young man with sexual impulses and in love… and she came from a very long abstinence too…

 

And when, around then in the morning, each group was finally ready to leave for their due destinations, Yuuri almost regretted his previous night – and morning session – with Flynn when he received smirks and winks and pats on the shoulder and nudges not only from Yozak – which was something easily predictable from the very start – but also from Saralegui and Conrad.

…almost…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And with this chapter this third part reached its end!
> 
> Thank you all for reading this story! I love you and, if you feel like leaving a comment or a kudos I'll be very very happy!
> 
> I know that someone wouldn't like for me to end this third part like this with a cliffanger, but I had to... even if when I started this third part I had something slightly different in mind... something less dramatic, truly... but don't you fear. Everything is going to be all right in the end.  
> ...and also: I need to write this story in parts because I need to feel like I finished something and reach a goal... it's for my sake and all my readers', otherwise I feel like I would never finish it... so, just to be clear: this story is in many parts, but it's one single story, so, please, have patience with me!
> 
> By the way, thank you all for your support until now. I hope to see you again in next part too <3 :)


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